


Tail as Old as Time, Swan Song as Old as Rhyme

by Kedreeva



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death, Aromantic Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Beauty and the Beast Elements, Curses, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Elements, Gabriel (minor) - Freeform, Horror Elements, Magic, Michael (minor) - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Near Death Experiences, Other, Shapeshifting, Sort Of, Swans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 41,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: Deep in the countryside, surrounded by a black-mirror lake, sits an abandoned manor, long since victim to some kind of magical catastrophe. Nothing lives there, nothing living will come within a mile of it, save for the one strange, graceful black swan that swims the moat, guarding the derelict home from anyone that would intrude.And for almost a hundred years, none have dared until Aziraphale unwittingly stumbles in, on the run from his family.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 695
Kudos: 670





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> LISTEN I can EXPLAIN I know I SAID I was going to write something sad but oh boy did I ever get waylaid by the feral need to write a Beauty and the Beast AU _immediately_ so here we are.

Beyond the bounds of civilization, past the last kempt road leading from the last dusty town, lies a manor long abandoned. Scorch marks lick up the walls of the eastern wing, surrounding the broken windows there, and ivy climbs the western walls nearly to the eaves of the slate roof. Spread around its base sits a lake, black as midnight and mirror-still, cutting the manor off from the mainland save for one thin, black-cobbled bridge at its front.

Nothing lives there; no fish in the lake, no mice in the walls, no birds in the crevices of the building, inside or out. For a mile in every direction, the air stagnates with a lack of living sound, as no animal dares approach, save one- a single, black swan that mars the stillness of the lake. It is too big to be a natural beast, and too long lived, and too strangely mannered. Unbothered by the season, it glides around the manor as if on patrol, graceful and silent, and for so long that its arrival has passed out of living memory.

That does not mean the townsfolk do not know of the swan or the manor or the grave sense of disquiet that comes from its preternatural stillness. The children venture out to dare one another to get closer and closer yet, because they have not learned to be truly afraid. The elderly travel there to look upon an end as their own may near. Neither will stay past dark, or trespass within the walls, or even cross the bridge to the open courtyard beyond.

Those that do have never returned.

Legends abound as to what happened once upon a time. The oldest speak of a sorcerer that lived within the manor and performed great magics in secret. Some say he was only a man, and that great magics were visited upon him only in the end. No two legends are quite the same, and no single legend is quite the truth any longer, so when the fires burn low and the air blows chill, the villagers keep themselves warm with heated arguments about the manor and its curse and its swan.

Some believe that the manor is haunted by the ghost of the sorcerer, a wailing, injured thing that calls out in the night and kills any who dare lay eyes upon it without the sun to guard them. Others will say the swan had been his familiar once, left behind in the desecration and bound to the manor where its master had passed from this world. Still others believe the sorcerer was turned into the swan by his own magic, or by whatever had come for him.

Magic has a price, they whisper.

Magic _always_ has a price.

No one tells this to the young man that fearfully stumbles across the coal-dark bridge and into the manor one evening. No one warns him what awaits him as the door closes on his heels. No one sees where he has fled, while running from the family that hunts him.

Or at least… _almost_ no one.


	2. Chapter 1

Aziraphale bolted awake, heart pounding, to an otherworldly wail echoing down the halls and filling all the empty spaces.

Without a thought, he grabbed the weapon nearest to him – a piece of wood not really meant to be used as a weapon – and scrambled to his feet as the wailing continued. It rose up to a crest and dropped down to silence before rising again. It had occurred to him, in the daylight, that this was not the sort of building one stayed in after dark, but when the horrible thrill of being pursued wore thin, he had nearly passed out asleep hiding inside of a closet, where day and night had very little meaning.

Screwing up his courage, he pushed open the door and stepped out into the pitch hall. It smelled of mildew, and the weavings on the walls were rotting out but didn’t look insect-eaten. The sound was louder here, but clearer, and he thought perhaps it sounded like some kind of animal, trapped somewhere it could not escape. He had heard coyotes yowl for freedom before, and while whatever made the racket was certainly not a coyote, it held all of the same wild longing at several times the volume.

Something so loud, sure to be heard for miles in any direction, was bound to draw attention and the last thing Aziraphale needed was to lose the ground he’d gained running away from Michael and Gabriel. He needed that sound to stop.

He swallowed, throwing a glance around, but he was the only moving thing in sight. He gripped his weapon – a beam upon which to hang clothes? he wondered as his groggy mind began to clear – tighter and moved down the hallway, one shaking step at a time. Perhaps he could find the beast, and set it loose so it would stop.

At least he could take comfort in knowing that this time the frightful thing waking him was something inhuman, rather than his own family catching up to him. His step-siblings would not be caught dead making such an unrefined fuss, and they didn’t tend to give verbal warning when they came for him, anyway. They would have just ransacked the place, overturning every piece of furniture, breaking whatever they could. If they had managed to follow him here, he would have been found by now.

He would be _dead_ by now.

Gently, he toed open the next door down the corridor, but the sound remained omnipresent even before Aziraphale poked his nose in to look around. An expanse of empty stone floor greeted him, and blank wooden walls, the same as the room he had ducked into to hide. There were not even curtains on the windows. He wondered if the former resident had packed up before the fire that had gotten the eastern wing of the manor, the one that looked to have left burn marks on the outside.

How sad, he remembered thinking as he had run for the door, to have burned while surrounded by all that water. Salvation right there, and no way to grant it.

It took several more doors and a turn around a bend before he found a room with any sign of habitation. It was a sitting room, with a writing desk along one wall and a lounging chair against the other, and a pair of books atop a small table beside candles that would catch more than the wick on fire if ever lit, when the dust burned off them. The desk was closed up, and Aziraphale had no key, so he shut the door again and moved onto the next room, which was again as empty as the first.

Initially, while dashing toward the building, he had chosen a door at the end of the west wing where the building curled like a cat’s tail close to the bridge. He had chosen it in panic, in fear, and looking back, maybe a little bit of common sense. One didn’t just go running toward the side of a building that had obviously suffered damage. But here in the dark, logic whispered to him that if this wing was deserted, the other must have been the one inhabited.

If it had been inhabited, it stood to reason that anything useful to his continued survival probably laid within it, and so he passed by the doors nearest to him, and on down the hall. He hadn’t gotten a very good look at the manor from the outside, but it seemed an almost crescent shape, if that crescent had had one point of it it stepped on to bend it awkwardly toward the other end. The corridor he walked ran straight enough toward the east, though, so he knew he must be in the central section by now.

The east wing’s border was starkly obvious when he reached it, a hard line between the part of the house that had only had to survive time and the part of the house that had barely survived _ruin_ first. Devastation.

Whatever had happened, Aziraphale realized it could not have been natural. The destruction ended in a perfect line, as if a wave had lapped at the wall and the floor in front of him and left it stripped of that which made it comfortably human, but only to a point. Aziraphale laid fingers to the threshold, and a shiver ran through him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck as the magic residue whispered over his senses.

No fire had stripped these walls or scorched this place. Magic had been done here. Magic so great that the lightning-crack scent of it still lingered _decades_ later. He swallowed, and tossed his flimsy piece of wood to the ground; it would do no good in this place, not against magic-touched things.

Before the clatter it made had even stopped, the haunting wail cut short and utter silence draped as a cloak over the entire manor. Aziraphale let out a breath that felt as loud as a gale, and stepped foot over the line into the ruined section of the manor. Gabriel and Michael likely wouldn’t look for him in the standing areas of this place, but they absolutely would never dare cross that line. Magic was the whole reason they were in this mess to begin with, after all.

He might as well have come to a different world. Though he had been correct that this was the living wing, the idea of _living_ had taken on grotesque meaning. Furniture he found in the rooms had been warped by whatever had happened here. Backs on chairs had curved and arms on lounges had distorted and the legs of the tables bent such that looked as if they had begun to run away like deer.

It all left behind the unsettling impression that everything had come to terrified life for a single, harrowing instant, and been crystallized in the next.

Immutable, primal terror writhed in Aziraphale’s gut, but still he pressed forward. Every step forward meant a step away from his pursuers. Every step forward was a step neither of them would take to reclaim him. Perhaps they would think him dead as well. If they made it this far, perhaps they would decided it didn’t matter, and leave him to his fate.

Aziraphale began to think maybe it didn’t matter, when he came upon the first of the statues. Though a few of them walked upright like humans, the resemblance ended there. Huge, twisted horns crested snarling faces. Claws, outstretched and thorn-sharp, grasped at the empty air. They were monsters, beasts not from this world, and they had been alive once, he was sure of it. Some of them had overbalanced and toppled to the stone floors, breaking into pieces that revealed they were stone through and through, despite how lifelike they looked.

There was a battle, he thought. There must have been a fierce battle. Whoever had owned the place must have fought it against these things. Given the state of the manor, it seemed unlikely they had won. The wailing had been from no human throat, but perhaps one of these things, trapped here instead of being returned to its own world. Aziraphale had read books about other worlds, and knew that the things from them always longed to return.

He pushed carefully through a set of double doors, stepping over the pieces of a creature long scattered, and into the biggest room yet. For a second, he thought somehow this place had a ballroom, the sort that he had been to several times as a small child, with a sweeping, arched ceiling and such an open space in the middle it had to belong to someone rich. But then his eyes fell to the books that lined every single wall of the room, from the ground all the way to the ceiling of the third floor. Hundreds of them, _thousands_ of them, more than one person could ever read in an entire lifetime, shelved here and-

and…

And destroyed, he realized with another unpleasant swoop of horror. Not all of the books, not all of the shelves, but whatever had happened to the manor, it had happened here. Deep, dark holes yawned in the middle of bookshelves, the books around them blackened by the sooty footprint of flame. Slash marks that cut across the bindings of whole rows of books, or down several shelves- marks made by claws, certainly, but the tingling sensation radiating from them spoke of magic as well.

Aziraphale had just found the ghost of this battle’s last stand.

He had found where it had ended.

Gentle eastern light began to soak in from a hole so deep it punctured the carapace of the library. Aziraphale could almost imagine the manor as a dying beast, lying curled on its side and bleeding an ichorous, black lake around itself from such a fatal wound. The combatants had clearly had no concern for collateral damage. They must have been fighting for their lives.

He turned away from the sight, to the side of the library which held a cage taller than a man and just as wide, filled to stuffed with tomes that looked older than the rest somehow. It was not that the dust was any thicker, but they looked to be made from materials that had gone out of favor, and had likely been written by the same hand that had pressed the pages individually to make them. These had not come from a printing press like the others. Someone had put a piece of their heart and soul into the crafting of these books.

The books inside that cage were the only thing in the room untouched entirely, even though the door had been torn off its hinges. It lay twisted upon the ground, and Aziraphale braved touching the very edge of it, barely a whisper of contact, but it was enough. Magic remembered being used. It remembered those who had used it, and it sent those memories glancing off his own, a defensive static shock that sent him reeling back, arms windmilling as he nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to get away.

An inhuman shriek sounded from the ragged wound behind him, and Aziraphale spun, clutching at his magic-numbed arm. Some great, long-necked beast stood in the opening, its massive, pointed wings unfurling, blending with the darkness as it shrieked again. He’d been found by whatever other-world monster had been left behind, trapped here, and it was _angry_.

He opened his mouth to say something, maybe offer to try to help it, but before he could finish a single word, the monster launched itself at him, the beating of its wings thunderous in the overwhelming silence.

Aziraphale yelped, the sound echoing off the books like the clatter of a missed throwing knife, and ducked to head for the exit. The monster hit the books just over his head in a flurry of feathers and fury, scattering books and stirring up great clouds of dust as it struggled to correct itself without falling to the floor. It managed to twist and push itself through the darkness right at Aziraphale again, and Aziraphale was forced to swerve away from the open door to avoid it again.

He listened to it flail and scream and honk in the hallway as he bolted for the opening in the wall. The manor was surrounded by water. Surely if the thing had not crossed to the land by now, it was because it couldn’t cross water. If he could make it to the water, then, he should be safe.

As he reached the wall, he prepped himself and gave a leap in order to get his arms over the edge. He could see far enough to find he was right. All he had to do was pull himself up and he could either slide down to the thin stone walkway that wrapped around the place, or he could jump out into the placid lake. He struggled his way up onto the precarious ledge of the hole, scrabbling books out beneath his feet, and spared a glance over his shoulder for his pursuer.

The monster was nowhere in sight, and nothing moved.

A slow, eerie hiss began, and Aziraphale took that has his cue to fling himself forward and into the lake.

The icy plunge stole the breath from his lungs and he struggled to get back to the surface with only one working arm. His other still tingled with the magic that had lashed out at him and while he knew the feeling and function would return, it hung uselessly at his side as he began to kick for the shore.

He stole a glance back at the manor, and saw motion in the gaping wound of it. The creature was climbing up into the opening, a halo of darkness around it where it fell still, watching him over the bright red spot of its bill.

It was a swan.

It hissed, the sound slithering across the water to Aziraphale, but it remained where it stood, allowing him to leave. As soon as Aziraphale’s feet touched the slimy shore, he sloshed and stumbled away from the manor and its monstrous, feathery denizen, his arm tight to his chest and his mind spinning with memories that did not belong to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone really liked the fairy tale prose of the prologue, so I am sorry if you were expecting more of that! The epilogue will read like that, if that's any consolation. The rest is just written like a normal story!


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, additional warnings apply, see end notes if you're worried!

Magic, Aziraphale had found over the years, did not always have  _ context _ . He lay in the shade of maple a short ways off the first road he had come to, and grasped at the liquid threads of memory that had slithered across his consciousness as he brushed up against the magic. He could feel the desperation of the cast. The anger. Illness ran beneath it, and hope. He felt the give of the door’s hinges as it twisted from its frame. But he had no references as to who, or why, it had happened. No context for the overwhelming clash of emotions behind the cast.

As feeling returned to it, he rubbed absently at his arm and avoided thinking the only thought that would come to him readily: he had to go back. Something had happened there, something magical, something  _ terrible _ . Something that sang to the very core of him, enticing despite his better judgment. There were secrets within those walls, and Aziraphale liked very little more than learning and keeping secrets.

There was the matter of the indecently-sized swan that seemed to believe it owned the place, but Aziraphale was fairly certain that it would be much less intimidating by the light of day. He was not about to let a  _ bird _ keep him from what had obviously been some sorcerer’s stash of books. Whatever had happened to him, whoever had started the fight, it had happened a very long time ago and they had not stayed. If Aziraphale could get the bird secured - or killed, a bird that size would keep him fed for days - he would be free to peruse at his leisure, and far more safely than other places, given his siblings’ disinclination to get too close to magic.

But he was hurting, and exhausted from days without proper sleep, and he had no tools with which to handle the swan anyway. So, he waited until he had use of his arm again, and instead of walking north, he clambered to his feet and took the road heading south. Even though he didn’t know where it would take him, he knew that roads generally did lead somewhere, and that going the other way would likely take him toward Gabriel and Michael, so despite the exhaustion dragging at his every step, he walked the couple of miles until he could see buildings in the distance.

The town, when he finally reached it, felt almost sleepy. A guard sat on a stump at the side of the road leading in, peeling a ruddy little apple with a blade that had never met the meaning of the word sharp. He barely spared Aziraphale a glance, except to raise a brow, presumably over the damp, rumpled state of Aziraphale’s dress. But he allowed Aziraphale to pass without comment, and Aziraphale breathed a silent thank you to that good fortune.

The scent of cooking meat clenched at Aziraphale’s belly and he placed a hand upon it as it gurgled angrily. He’d had no time to pack anything when he left his home. No food, no water, no money. He had survived the last two weeks by picking up odd jobs in exchange for food and a roof for the night, or foraging what he could from the wild. What wilderness knowledge he had came from when his father had taken him hunting, a long time ago. He knew how to set a snare for a rabbit, and which berries could be eaten and which could not. He knew how to dig for cattail roots if he got desperate.

He was nearly desperate enough now, smelling the market wares, but to his relief, the first shop he visited was run by a lovely young woman named Anathema who took pity upon him. She gave him a bowl of stew and a mug of clean water in exchange for just a bit of heavy lifting, and he helped clean up after the cooking as well. She winked and gave him a couple of small coins on top of that, for being so polite to her, and told him in a hushed, knowing whisper that he needed to sort out his aura, whatever that meant.

It was as he was leaving her shop to try to figure out what to do next that he heard the faint, offended whinny of Gabriel’s horse. Sandalphon had damaged his throat barrelling smack into a fence when he was foal, and while it hadn’t killed him, it had given him an oddly-pitched voice that set most people on edge. Gabriel thought it was intimidating, and so had kept the beast instead of culling him. Aziraphale had never been happier for Gabriel’s bad tastes as he was the first time Sandalphon’s whinny had given him away and allowed Aziraphale to escape.

It was just as useful now, as Aziraphale ducked into the shallow alley between two shops and began to head out of town the way he’d come. He would rather brave the gigantic, pissed-off swan than his siblings. At least it would be socially acceptable to kill and eat the swan if they got into a fight, and he felt much better about his chances of winning now that he’d had something to eat.

If the walk to town had been unpleasant, in his wet boots and his damp clothes with his aching arm, the run back was equally so and for worse reasons. His arm still ached, and running on a full stomach did him no favors, and although he had dried his boots beside Anathema’s cooking fire, the would-be pleasant sun sent trickles of sweat down his back. It took every ounce of his will and attention to continue putting one foot in front of the other without falling over, so he almost missed the sound of hooves on the road. He almost missed seeing the spires of the manor in the distance, off to his right, down a road so unused it had been obscured almost entirely by thick scrub. A road he had missed turning onto, he thought frantically as he dashed into the brush to avoid being seen, and one he would have to find now.

It was too late. He knew it was, had known it the second he heard the horses. They were going to catch him, here or there. Still, he ran as fast as his jelly legs would carry him, after all the running he’d already done. The manor was only a mile or so from the curve of the road he’d been on, and it was inhospitable terrain to a running horse so they would have to slow, or even dismount. If he could make it to the door, he stood a chance at surviving.

Too many exhausting minutes later, he stumbled out of the brush and onto the dirt leading up to the bridge, and his gaze immediately landed on the huge black swan paddling around in the lake. Its head reared up at the commotion, and Aziraphale hesitated just long enough to hear someone shout his name from behind him.

Michael.

“I’m sorry!” he yelled to the swan as he barreled across the bridge, straight for the door nearest to the eastern wing. His apology was met by an indignant  _ waugh! _ from the swan, but it wouldn’t be able to catch him either. He hit the door running, and threw a shoulder into it as he scrabbled at the handle.

It creaked open on rusted hinges, and Aziraphale whipped inside just enough to whirl and slam the bolt closed. He could hear hooves clopping on the bridge and the furious noises of the swan getting ready to defend its territory. He felt a little bad for it; neither Gabriel nor Michael would tolerate being savaged by a bird, and they both carried swords.

But, instead of silence, he heard Sandalphon’s panicked squeals and Uriel joined a moment later, and everything dissolved into frantic shouting, followed by a splash that  _ had _ to be one of the riders being thrown into the lake. Aziraphale threw up a silent thank you to the swan for being  _ such _ an absolute monster, and then moved away from the door and into the wing. He knew where he wanted to hide. The cage that held the ancient books was the very last place those two would approach, if they even made it as far as the library. He was certain they knew so little about magic that he could bluff his way out of a confrontation from there.

But when he drew open the library door, he found his plans cut terrifically short by the impossible, hulking swan in the middle of the room. Its long, thick neck allowed it to stand tall enough it could look down upon him a little, its wingspan easily longer than he was tall. He had seen a couple of swans in his life - there were several that lived on the grounds at his father’s summer lake home - but though they were not small beasts, this one would have dwarfed them, easily twice their size. It had absolutely no business being in the library, when it had just been out on the bridge, but it had apparently not gotten notification of the rules of reality because it stood in the middle of the room, waiting with wings spread, and stared levelly at him with yellow, slitted eyes.

A chill zipped down his spine.

No feral beast stared back at him from those eyes.

This was no swan. This was a monster.

“Please,” he said softly. “Help me. Those people are my step siblings, and they’re here to kill me for using magic. I just need someplace to hide until they’re gone.”

For a moment, the swan just stood there, implacable, its golden eyes ticking over him, and then its wings lowered and its head dipped a little. It almost,  _ almost _ looked like a bow. Its head and neck swiveled and it looked to the raw opening in the wall, the one through which Aziraphale had fled before. Maybe it thought he could do so again. Maybe it didn’t understand that he’d never get away on foot. He’d certainly never be able to  _ swim _ to safety.

“I can’t,” he said, as reasonably as he could while arguing with a bird like it was a person. He took a step toward the cage, intent on just going around it now that it had calmed down, but it snapped a wing out and raised its head and hissed at him, so he fell still again. “They’ll catch me outside.”

The swan made a soft hooting noise, and dipped its head again, looking between Aziraphale and the wall. Aziraphale looked between the swan and the wall, and back to the swan, and back to the wall before sighing. It wasn’t going to  _ let  _ him pass, and getting past it silently wasn’t going to happen. Maybe if he swam for the opposite shore, he could put enough distance between them for now.

“When they kill me,” he told the swan very seriously as he began to move for the opening, “I’m blaming you.”

As graceful as swans seemed on water, this one was doing no favors to its kind’s reputation by waddling heavily after Aziraphale, its huge, webbed feet shifting debris around. It paused behind him when he hesitated at the wall. The opening was higher than he remembered, and he’d had a running start last time. When he heard his name shouted in the distance, he risked a glance over his shoulder, at the closed library doors. They had made it inside the manor.

He twitched as the swan bit at his ankles and then he was climbing the sturdy shelving, his muscles still quivering from the running he’d done. It wasn’t  _ very _ far up, thankfully, and it took only a minimal amount of embarrassing struggling to flop himself over the opening. Somehow he managed to stop himself before his momentum tumbled him right out the other side, and then he was staring at the cold, dark lake and the prospect of jumping into it for a second time that day.

There was still a small ledge, a catwalk at best, skirting the manor. If Aziraphale hung down, he could probably catch it, maybe shimmy along it until he got to somewhere wider. If he went around the front, he might even be able to grab one of the horses and run for it. Sandalphon was too ornery to take any rider that wasn’t Gabriel, but Uriel was, if not nice, at least obedient to whoever held her set of reins.

With an anxious glance at the swan staring patiently at him, Aziraphale turned himself around and began to lower himself to the walkway. He closed his eyes, wiggling his foot until he felt his boot catch on the lip of it. There was only a little more than a handspan. He would need to turn around, lean his back against the manor’s wall if he wanted to scoot along it to safety. Loud clatters sounded above him, wrapped in the sound of a few frantic wingbeats, and then the swan was staring down at him.

He realized what was about to happen only a second before it did, just enough time to pull his hand away from where the swan’s bill snapped shut against the stone. “Hey!” he hissed, grabbing hold again. “Don’t you da- ow!” He snapped his other hand away from the bite he’d just gotten for his trouble. “Why you-!”

He made as if to give a half-hearted swat at the beast, but instead of backing away from the motion like an animal would, the swan snatched up his wrist in its massive beak and launched itself bodily away from the hole, dragging Aziraphale with it down into the water. Panic seized in Aziraphale’s gut and he only just managed to keep from crying out before he hit the water with a massive splash. To his great relief, the swan released him as soon as they were both swimming.

Aziraphale was not a graceful swimmer. He was barely a swimmer at all, tending to stay where he could touch the bottom. A good stroll along the beach was nice. He had been running for his life from the swan the last time. This was… this was an outrage, unnecessary. He could have been hiding in a nice, dry room instead. He could be inching along the outside of a building. He could be halfway to the road on Uriel’s back. He paddled up to the surface and gasped in a breath and let it out on a string of hissed curses.

“You foul beast!” he snapped, rotating to point himself toward the shore. “You fiend!”

The swan swam in front of him and snapped at him with a low hiss. He splashed it with water and got a wing buffet that didn’t hit in return. “I have to go! They’ll have heard us for sure!”

The swan glided easily over the surface, as if sitting atop a slick of ice, and Aziraphale watched as it got too close to the building a little ways away and then- and then it disappeared. Aziraphale tread water for a moment, and then heaved himself forward, paddling like a dog to get closer. The swan appeared from the stone again, and came to swim a slow circle around him before disappearing once more. It had to be an illusion, Aziraphale thought as he reached the spot, but the reality he found was perhaps just as clever.

It was a hidden spillway, invisible because of the construction of its layered walls rather than any magic. The swan waited just behind the false wall, head cocked as if it were… smiling? What a silly notion. Swans didn’t smile.

But then, they didn’t lead strange humans to hidden passageways in magical abandoned manors found down overgrown roads, either.

“Thank you,” he said, because it seemed appropriate. His mother had taught him-

Grief lanced through him before he could even finish the thought. She had only been gone a couple of weeks and already everything was such a mess. He’d  _ made _ such a mess of things. He never should have left. He should have stayed and stood his ground, told the others what really happened until they believed him.  _ If _ they would have believed him. Given Gabriel and Michael’s presence, he somehow doubted it, but that didn’t make the could-haves sting any less.

The swan hooted softly, the barest trill of a noise, and then zipped right back out around the corner, leaving him in the artificial darkness of this protected cove. Aziraphale waited a few seconds to see if it would return, but when it did not, he paddled to the back of the passage, until he found the thick, metal-barred gate that blocked the way. There was nowhere to get out of the water and a quick dive down told him that there was no way through the gate. He was stuck here until it was safe to leave.

He very nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard Michael’s voice, thick with disgust, as if she were right there in the passage with him.

“It’s just the damned swan.” There was a soft scrape, followed by a watery plonk that suggested she had thrown something small but heavy into the lake, and Aziraphale had the horrifying, momentary thought that she might have thrown part of a monster statue. “He wouldn’t have jumped in anyway. The kid can’t swim.”

Aziraphale bristled. Kid? He was only a couple of years younger than them. He threw an annoyed a glance around above his head, and spotted the vent that must lead to wherever they were standing. It let in no light, which suggested it bent at some point. He couldn’t see them, which was probably for the best as it meant they wouldn’t be able to see him either.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” came Gabriel’s haughty sneer. “Two weeks ago he couldn’t do magic, either, and here we are.” He roughed a noise in the back of his throat. “Always knew he was a little… you know.”

“You didn’t,” Michael said in the tired, annoyed tone only siblings could achieve. “You’d have said something. Subtlety is not your strong suit.”

“Candor is a virtue,” Gabriel retorted. There was a bit of shuffling and grinding of stone on stone. It was enough of a surprise that they’d braved the east wing, but even more so that they were touching  _ obviously _ cursed objects. Aziraphale had underestimated how much they wanted him dead. “Ugh. Let’s go. This place gives me the creeps.”

“We can’t just leave,” Michael said, as if it pained her to admit. “He’s around here somewhere.”

Gabriel snorted. “We’re a week from the border,” he said. “What’s he going to do, come home? After all this? Innocent people don’t run, Michael.”

There was a long silence then, and Aziraphale knew they were staring one another down, a battle of wills, and he also knew that Gabriel would win, even before Michael made a throaty noise of irritation. “Fine,” she said hotly. “But we’re not leaving tonight. I’m tired, and so are the horses. We’ll graze them, and I’m going to find a  _ real bed _ in this shack, and I’m going to  _ sleep in it _ .”

“We’ll do a sweep in the morning,” Gabriel offered. “If it’ll make you feel better.”

“What would make me  _ feel better _ is if our murderous baby brother hadn’t holed up someplace where  _ these  _ things-”

The sound of skin slapping stone immediately preceded a crack like a felled tree’s last effort to stay standing. Water sloshed around Aziraphale as he jerked, hands coming up automatically to protect himself from something that was not a danger to him. Several thumps and crashes followed the sound of things breaking, quieter than the ear-splitting scream of Gabriel’s panic. Aziraphale tried to listen over the thunder of his own heartbeat, and caught the sound of someone scrambling to their feet and running, and it must have been Gabriel because Michael had gone silent.

Something had happened. Michael must have touched something the way Aziraphale had last night, except Michael had no protection from it. Aziraphale’s hand fluttered to his chest, to the lump of the amulet hanging there, and then he was paddling toward the entrance. If Michael was still alive, she would need help Gabriel wasn’t about to give.

He blinked in the too-bright sun and peered around for the swan, but it was nowhere in sight, so he began to push his way along the manor’s wall with his boots to go faster. He rounded the bend just in time to see Gabriel burst from one of the doors, white as a sheet. The swan was already waddling toward the horses, hissing and hooting and stirring them into a frenzy. Gabriel would be lucky to get on one of them, much less take both, and sure enough he swatted at the swan with his sword, missed by a long shot, and grabbed only Sandalphon’s reins. The swan gave a fierce bite to Sandalphon’s ankle, dodging the retaliatory kick the horse gave before he bolted, rider and all, across the bridge and into the underbrush.

“Hey!” Aziraphale shouted when the swan turned its attention to harassing Uriel where she was still tethered to her post. He started splashing loudly toward them, having run out of reasons to be quiet. “Hey, leave her be! I can still ride her!”

The swan stopped, as if it understood him, looking between the two before it lowered its head nearly to the ground and started waddling with intent toward the door Gabriel had left open. Aziraphale reached the rescue stairs, set along the base of the bridge, and hauled himself weakly out of the water, flopping onto the sun-warmed cobblestone. He lay there panting for a couple of seconds and then groaned and rolled onto his side and heaved himself to his knees, and then his feet. Michael might still need help.

He might have wandered the manor in the general direction of the eastern wall, and might have gotten lost, except that the swan had left a trail of wet puddles on the stone floor, and Aziraphale guessed they were going the same place he wanted to be. He trod soddenly after the bird, down two hallways until he reached where the swan stood before a group of monstrous stone statues.

Or at least,  _ mostly _ monstrous, Azirapahle realized, belly sinking.

The one that lay upon the floor at the swan’s feet had no coat of dust. Her fingertips were soft and human, her clothing formerly made of fine fabrics and masterfully tailored. He recognized the shapes of her face, even with her expression twisted into a snarl as she snapped at Gabriel, and slapped a hand down on something that had ended her life instantly. What would only have sent another tingle up Aziraphale’s arm as the magic was absorbed, instead had worked correctly. It had turned her to stone, the same way as the other monsters in the hall.

He turned away, eyes closing.

There was no saving her from that. He had very little experience with magic, but there was none that could bring stone back to real life. There were spells to animate stonework, or move it, or change it into other inanimate things, but once a creature had been changed, once it had been killed, it could not be brought back.

Michael was gone, just like that, and Gabriel had been right to flee.

“He’s going to think I did this,” Aziraphale choked out, rubbing the back of a hand over his inexplicably wet eyes and cheeks. He should be glad for this. She had wanted him dead, and now she was gone, and he should be glad for it, but he was not. He wasn’t like them. Even though he knew they hated him, he didn’t want them dead. “They were supposed to be my family.”

The swan made a soft noise, a small trill, and waddled past him close enough to touch. It did not look back, just left the way it had come, heading for the exit. Aziraphale stayed a little longer, long enough to decide there was no way he could move her statue intact to… he didn’t even know what. He didn’t want to just leave her there, but he wasn’t going to bury a statue, and he probably had to go keep the swan from bothering the horse anyway, so he took a deep breath, and followed after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter, there will be a minor character's death. It's not Aziraphale or swan!Crowley.
> 
> As for those of you here at the end of reading- welp. Not quite as haunting as the other chapters, but hopefully entertaining!


	4. Chapter 3

“They didn’t always want me dead,” he said into the awkward silence that had unfurled around them when the swan had come ashore to sit and watch him. “Gabriel, and- and Michael. Or anyone else, really.”

Nearby, Uriel had her head down grazing, free of her saddle and her bit. She had been tired from her ride, and thirsty, and apparently quite hungry because she hadn’t bolted and left him standing there like a fool when he let her have her head. He’d watched for a little while, and then sat down with his back to one of the sturdy, gnarled trees. Before long the swan had joined him, nibbling around in the grass as if looking for insects. There were none.

There were _nearly_ none, anyway, and certainly none on the ground. He had seen a dragonfly zip past, and bees hovering around the flowers of what he thought might be an apple tree. But the grounds were otherwise tomb-silent, absent the tunes of crickets or songs of frogs or birds. It was almost as if the wildlife had all agreed this was a place of danger, and avoided it entirely.

“It’s just, they think I did something I didn’t,” he continued, putting his head back against the tree and fiddling with the long, stiff piece of grass he’d plucked for something to do. He glanced over to find the swan a captive audience, or at least a captivated one. It must like the sound of his voice, he decided, so he kept on. “They think I killed our mother. They do have their reasons, but they’re wrong. At least, I _think_ they’re wrong.”

When he failed to continue, the swan gave a soft hoot, and Aziraphale tossed the stalk away from him before fishing under his shirt for the amulet around his neck. He twisted to show it to the swan. He didn’t expect the beast to know what it was. Aziraphale hadn’t, not for most of his life.

“My mother put this around my neck when I was just a babe,” he explained. “She told my father it was a talisman to protect me. He didn’t like it; no one up there likes magic, but at least artifact magic is… well, sometimes you can get away with it. People will look the other way if you have a good reason, and if it’s small enough. Protecting a baby… people like that, as long as the protection is more like a good stew than a sleight of hand. And corporeal magic… that’s a bad trick, where I’m from. Absolutely against the rules.”

The swan made a sound like a sneeze, or maybe a scoff, and Aziraphale laughed at how much it seemed like it understood. He didn’t think it actually _did_ \- even if it truly was a monster and not a beast, he didn’t expect it to understand human language. It was nice to be heard, all the same, and if he wasn’t talking to the swan, he’d be talking to the horse, and Uriel wasn’t nearly as interested. In fact, he’d probably just get bitten.

“Which I suppose,” he continued, “makes _me_ absolutely against the rules.” He smiled a bit ruefully at the swan. “I can do corporeal magic, you know. I mean, I could, if I learned how. Couldn’t have done at home, that’s painfully obvious now, with how everyone reacted to… everything.”

He fell quiet, watching Uriel pull up clumps of sweet meadowgrass and behead all of the large, purple clover flowers. He wondered if she knew how far from home she was. If she missed her pasture mates, Sandalphon, or Metatron, or even the donkeys Beelzebub or Ligur or Hastur. If she knew she would probably never see them again, because he couldn’t take her home. If she would care even if she did know.

Some part of him did, some part of him missed home, but it was small and mostly saying that out of fear, and the home it missed was more of an idea than a reality anyway. He didn’t want to actually go back to where he’d come from. He didn’t want to see the family that was willing to assume such horrible things about him. He didn’t want to return to a family that hated a huge part of what he was, even if he’d only just discovered that part, himself.

“I don’t know who I’m fooling,” he mumbled into the strange quiet, dropping his gaze to his hands. “They didn’t like me before the magic, either. This was just an excuse to do something about it. A good excuse, by their reckoning.” He stopped, not sure he wanted to say anymore, but he couldn’t imagine the swan would judge him if it couldn’t really understand. “They think I used magic to kill her.”

It felt strange to say it aloud. He hadn’t, not since it had happened. not since he had been forced to flee. He had magic, and his mother was dead, and Gabriel had caught him and locked him up for it because he thought the former had caused the latter. They would have executed him without bothering to hear him because they believed he was a danger, that he had lied and hidden his magic from them his entire life.

But he hadn’t! He hadn’t, or at least not on _purpose_. The amulet had dampened his magic, absorbed it, made him seem normal. The only reason he even knew otherwise at all was because his mother had sent for him, asking him to meet her at the lake house. There, she had taken his amulet off, and shown him what he truly was by arcing power between her hands for him, a mage in her own right, before passing it to him the way other parents might throw a child a ball. As he had held the glowing, blue sphere of power, his life had begun to make sense for the very first time.

The undercurrent of desire that had left him wanting for as long as he could remember had a name.

He was meant to do magic, like his mother before him.

However, there were reasons corporeal magic was so feared in his lands. His people had settled among legends, among monsters and beasts that were drawn to such things. Beings that might have left alone a village that had no magic within its walls, but were drawn to the shore of a lake where two casters set free their magic to let it touch the earth and the sky and the water. Things which were endlessly hungry. Things which had not hesitated to strike his mother down to get at the power they could sense the way a dog tracked a scent.

It had happened so fast that he had not had time to save her. No matter how much power he did or did not have at his disposal, there was no power, nefarious or otherwise, that could bring life back to an object that had lost it. Prolong life, perhaps, even indefinitely... but not return it. He had chased the creatures back into the sky with a sword wrapped in magical flame, but it hadn’t made a difference. Gabriel had still found him standing over his mother’s corpse, magic sparking its own betryal. He’d only just had time to grab his amulet from where she had set it before Gabriel had gotten hold of him, and hauled him to a cell.

“I suppose I’m lucky Gabriel didn’t kill me on sight,” he said with a bitter laugh. “He could have. I don’t think anyone would have argued it was wrong, given what they thought. But it...” He sighed and shook his head. “Maybe it _was_ my _fault_. She wouldn’t- those things wouldn’t have come if she hadn’t been playing with magic for me. But I didn’t _ask_ for magic, and I didn’t _ask_ her to tell me like that, and I _wasn’t_ the one who struck the blow.”

He was not sure who he was trying to convince, but he suspected it was himself. He’d been over and over and over it in his head, plucking at every _what if_ and _could have_. Hindsight, he supposed, gave enough perspective to make available options that hadn’t existed at the time. He risked a glance over at the swan, to see if it was still paying attention, and it was. It watched him almost curiously, as though it had a lot of questions, and Aziraphale laughed a little, surprising himself.

“You’re an odd duck,” he said, smiling again at the offended _waugh_ he got for that. “Yes, I know you’re a swan. Thank you for listening to me. No one else would.”

Not even Raphael, when he had snuck down to let Aziraphale out, had wanted to hear the story. “They won’t bother to ask you,” Raphael had said, “so it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not. It’s 50/50, and that’s not good enough for me. Get as far as you can, and write me a letter if you intend to come back. I’ll do what I can.”

Aziraphale hadn’t written the letter, and he doubted he ever would now. There was every chance that Gabriel would ride all the way back home and tell everyone he was dead, or maybe even that he had avenged Michael’s death by killing Aziraphale himself. Gabriel was just enough of a coward for it. With the supposed blood of his mother and his sister on his hands, there was no way Aziraphale could go back. Even if they cleared his name now, there would be those that doubted. Those that still believed he did it.

No, better to stay here, and start over. Start something new.

It wasn’t all bad. The manor seemed long-abandoned by humans, and it was apparently quite dangerous to go about touching things inside of it without some kind of protection, so he seriously doubted anyone would object if he took up residence. He could clean it up, clear it out, make it his. With Uriel here now, he could easily get between the manor and the town for supplies. He had heard that folks in the south were more accepting of corporeal magic. Between what he could scavenge from the inside and what he might be able to learn to do for the town with his magic, he could probably get on alright.

As if to punctuate the thought, his stomach rumbled to remind him that he hadn’t gotten along very well since his early lunch, and the sun would be setting soon. He considered leading Uriel back to the manor, but it seemed unlikely that Michael had fed her much today, given the enthusiasm with which she was grazing. He doubted they’d given the horses much rest _at all_ , over the two weeks they’d been chasing him.

So, grumbling, he clambered to his feet and began to walk the perimeter of the area where they’d been sitting. For a little while the swan watched him, but when he found a small patch of early fruited blueberries and began to pick them, it got to its feet and waddled back down to the water and began its patrol of the manor’s isle. Aziraphale smiled to think that maybe he would be allowed past the gate this time.

It didn’t take long for Uriel to figure out he was picking treats she didn’t have to fight a bush for, and she began to bite at him impatiently. He yelped when she got a bruising one to the back of his shoulder, and he swatted at her nose before offering a few of the fruits to her on a flat palm. She ate them with her ears laid back, and bit him again anyway in the process, and he spent the rest of his little foraging trip putting a tree between himself and the nosy, spiteful horse.

There were more berries around than he had expected. He’d been sure that the birds of the area would have eaten most of them, but like the insects, they seemed to be absent, even in song. He peered around while he picked, his neck prickling with the realization that _nothing_ was making noise still, not even in the distance. Aziraphale was used to wildlife quieting upon the arrival of a human, but they never stayed quiet this long. It made him wonder if there was a predator in the area that he should be keeping an eye on, but he didn’t see any of those, either.

When he had filled the bowl of his tunic with what fresh foods he could find, he grabbed hold of Uriel’s bridle and led her quickly back to the manor. He would take her to town tomorrow and figure out how he was going to keep her at a manor that had no apparent place for horses outside of it. He couldn’t imagine she would want to sleep inside, either, but at worst he could convert one of the larger rooms in the west wing into a stall for her. Most of his family’s horses had been kept pastured, with just lean-to structures to shelter from storms in, so she wouldn’t _like_ being indoors, but she also wouldn’t be eaten by wolves. It would do until he’d gotten some form of fencing up for her and investigated if there were predators big enough to take a horse in the area.

He would do it all, of course, and gladly, because having a horse on hand when the nearest civilization was a few miles away would be invaluable. It was also worth considering the prospect of having another conversational partner outside of the cranky swan. Maybe they could get along, bond over their shared hatred for humans. He chuckled to himself as they stepped onto the bridge and Uriel’s hooves began to clip-clop along.

The swan appeared like a troll from beneath the bridge and gave him a throaty, annoyed hiss, and Aziraphale let go of Uriel’s bridle long enough to toss a few berries into the water as a distraction. The swan did not stop hissing as it gobbled them down, which only made it sound ridiculous, and Aziraphale told it so.

“You can’t be expected to be taken seriously while blowing bubbles in the water,” he said, taking light hold of Uriel’s bridle again as she swiveled her head to bite him, presumably for giving the swan treats and not her. He held her at bay and added for good measure: “It makes you look like a very angry infant.”

Uriel pulled her head and went straight for the bowl he’d made of his tunic, and he found himself struggling to shoulder her away without spilling any. Somehow they made it across the bridge and he let her go to fumble his way into the manor. He dashed for the kitchen, dumping the berries into a clay bowl he had cleaned and left to dry earlier, and then dashed right back out again to catch her before she could figure out how to go across the bridge to the grass on her own.

The swan clambered up the last of the rescue steps by the bridge just as Aziraphale was standing there debating the merit of bringing the horse into the manor versus leaving her tethered to something outside. He had never really taken care of the horses himself. He had ridden some, but mostly day trips, or camping trips where there wasn’t a choice about what to do. He had no idea if horses were more comfortable being able to move around in a building or being outside but tethered.

“I don’t suppose _you_ have any experience taking care of horses,” he said to the swan as it waddled closer. Uriel stomped a foot and started turning in place as if preparing for a fight, and Aziraphale realized there wasn’t really a choice here either. He was fairly certain the swan would harass her ceaselessly if they were left alone.

He clicked to Uriel and she flicked an ear in recognition of his request to move, but she tried to do so while keeping the approaching swan in sight. They were still pretty far apart. If she would pay attention they wouldn’t have to have an interaction at all, but that seemed less likely with every second.

“Come _on_ , you silly beast, just ignore him,” Aziraphale said, deciding in the same moment that he did think the swan was a _him_. “We’ll have you inside in a second and he hasn’t got thumbs. Barely a threat, really.”

He pushed open the door they had haltingly reached, and pulled her in after him. She tossed her head and stomped her feet, nearly crushing him to the wall as she tried to both go forward and turn around at the same time. Aziraphale gave a little bit of a sharp yank to the bridle to get her attention and had to jump-step a few feet forward when she charged a step in retaliation.

If he’d had time to make considerations, he might have chosen one of the larger rooms, one meant to be a bedroom, but as it was the closest room happened to be only a small study. But it was empty, and the floor was stone and had no rugs to ruin, and he pulled her into it just to avoid the argument of making her wait while he found a bigger one. To her annoyance, he then also had to scoot back around her, and she made a very good effort to kick him right before he reached the door and – thankfully – missed.

He shut the door with perhaps more force than was necessary, and banged on it for good measure, but Uriel either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

When he turned around, the swan was standing there, wings up.

Aziraphale had sworn he closed the outer door, but obviously not. “Now, she’s locked up,” he told the swan in a stern tone. “She won’t bother you, and you shouldn’t bother her.”

The swan lowered his head and gave a throaty hiss as he began to advance upon Aziraphale, not dropping the threat display in the least, and it occurred to Aziraphale that perhaps the swan’s issue was _not_ with the horse. Or at least, not with _just_ the horse. He had been fine with Aziraphale all day, but seemed to take offense to him being inside of the manor now. Well, he _had_ made promises.

“I know that I said I was just going to hide until they went away,” Aziraphale explained, backing up a step. “But in all fairness, Michael is still in the hallway.” His throat closed up on the lump of that thought, but he pushed onward. “And I haven’t got anywhere else to go. I can’t go home.”

Trying to reason with a swan felt particularly silly, but at the same time he was fairly certain ‘just a swan’ couldn’t describe the creature before him now. For one, he stared directly at Aziraphale in a way only intelligent things did, absolutely no uncertainty in the way he held himself. He was going to oust Aziraphale from this manor, or he was going to die trying, and Aziraphale didn’t particularly fancy either of those options coming to pass.

He wasn’t getting past the swan, so he backed up another step and glanced over his shoulder at his options. Most of the doors along the corridor were open from when he had gone through them last night, and it occurred to him that he had already locked up one beast. The trick would be getting a smarter beast to fall for it, and one without a lead on its face.

“Now, I- I- I- you should know,” he stammered out, gauging the distance and trying to sound firm. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m not leaving this place. You’re going to have to learn to get along with me _inside_ as well.” His brow furrowed and he turned his full attention back to the swan. “In fact, if one of us belongs outside, I rather think it’s you.”

It lunged at him, and he dove sideways into the room at which he’d just arrived, making sure to get far enough that not closing the door behind himself made sense. The swan flapped and hissed and honked in the hallway before appearing, disgruntled, in the doorway. He stomp-waddled forward, angry instead of just threatening, and Aziraphale backed into the room a few steps more to make sure the swan would join him completely. He edged to one side, and the swan walked to the other, keeping his head swiveled toward Aziraphale.

Some part of Aziraphale felt gratified to know that that was intelligent behavior. He was being herded. Rather, the swan _thought_ he was herding him, and as long as Aziraphale continued to look a little afraid, a little uncertain, he was sure his own plan would work better. He was _very_ good at those two emotions.

“Alright,” he said, as if he meant to surrender, still inching toward the exit. “I’ll go. I’ll have to get the horse, is that alright with you?”

The swan stilled, staring hard at him, and then, of all things, he _nodded_.

Aziraphale swallowed. He had wondered, guessed even, but he hadn’t actually… it was one thing to wonder and another entirely to be presented with such plain evidence of the occult at work. To know that the beast before him really was no beast at all and actually _did_ understand him.

He grabbed at the handle just behind him and saw the moment the swan realized what was going to happen. It was too late to stop him, though. Aziraphale dragged the door with him as he leapt backward into the hallway. It slammed shut, a sound followed immediately by that of the huge swan throwing himself against it, wings beating as he shrieked. Aziraphale held the door shut against the swan’s effort to get the handle to turn down.

“I’m not leaving this manor,” he called over the racket. “There’s no reason we cannot coexist here.”

The swan fell quiet, and Aziraphale let out a breath. He threw a glance around for some way to keep the door shut when the creature on the other side of it knew how to use a handle even without thumbs, but there was nothing close. He was not about to stand here all night, either. They had to reach an accord.

“If I let you out, are you going to keep trying to chase me out?” he called, gripping tighter as the swan tried the handle again. “Honk once for yes or twice for no.”

Silence again, but only for a moment before it gave two short honks.

“Are you lying to me?”

One _very angry_ honk.

“That’s not very nice of you,” Aziraphale admonished.

The door rattled as the swan came at it again, with what sounded like wings and feet and chest and bill all at once. It kicked up a ruckus again, and Aziraphale could only imagine what sort of rage could be jam-packed into a body already so built for it.

The he spotted it.

A piece of the stone floor that had been broken by something, sitting loose and _almost_ in reach. He would have to let go of the handle to fetch it, but he would only need a second. He waited until the swan had tired of attacking the door, until it tried the handle and Aziraphale could be fairly certain it would not try again in the next few seconds, and then he released it. As quick as he could, he scooped up the rock and smashed it down on the handle at just the right angle to bend it instead of break it off. The mechanism jammed with a terrible grating noise, locking the door in place.

A soft, questioning sound came from within.

“I- I’ve smashed the handle,” he said, uncertain at first but gaining in indignance as he went. “I’ll let you out in the morning, and we’ll have a civilized conversation about this situation we’re in. Now I’m- I’m going to go find a bed, and get some sleep, and I suggest you do the same.”

Apparently the swan did _not_ agree to those terms, but it didn’t really matter. There was no way, short of tools and thumbs, that that door latch was going to come out of the wall. The swan could scream and flap and bite all he wanted, and it would make no difference at all to the door. Or to Aziraphale, who planned to find a room as far away as possible.

Well, Aziraphale thought as he walked away, guilt prickling at his skin a little now that he knew the swan understood the predicament he was in. It _almost_ wouldn’t matter to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going well for all of them.


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyy heads up, extra warnings this chapter, as always, please click to see the end notes if you're worried about the tags the story has!

Aziraphale woke to a beam of sunlight creeping across his eyes and reminding him why he preferred west-facing windows. He stretched and yawned and paused to listen, but at some point during the night the swan’s angry tantrum had turned into the same haunting wail he’d heard the first night, and finally fell silent. He assumed the swan had exhausted himself, and fallen asleep. Or worse, gotten out, but as Aziraphale currently had a face full of sun instead of a face full of furious swan, that seemed unlikely.

The swan was not going to be pleased with him, but he couldn’t exactly leave it locked up in that room forever, so he pulled on his trousers and heaved himself out of the bed and retrieved his boots from their spot beside the door.

It was nice, he found himself thinking, to be here when dawn had just broken. The quiet reminded him of home, before the other members of his household would rise and force the day to begin in earnest. Often, when he’d been little, he would have gotten up with the very first grey, and gone down to the kitchen where the cook was making bread. She would make it by candlelight, which meant that if Aziraphale was quiet, he could read a book to himself in the corner without wasting any wax, and sometimes the cook would give him the heel of the first loaf, slathered in fresh butter, or jam in the right season. She had taught him how to cook when he was little older, even though his father hadn’t really approved. But he _loved_ food, and there was something about combining a bunch of discrete elements to make something new that had spoken to him.

He supposed now that it was because cooking was a little like magic, in that respect, and now there was no one to stop him from doing either, aside from perhaps the swan.

He rapped upon the door when he reached it, and heard something impact loudly, followed by a few crashes. Aziraphale listened to the ensuing silence for a second before he heard a soft, questioning trill.

“I told you I’d let you out in the morning,” he called through the door. He was not entirely sure how he was going to do that, but he had broken a lot of things in his life, and he didn’t exactly need to _fix_ this one, he just needed to break it enough to open the door. “And I do keep my word.” He wiggled the broken handle doubtfully. “Although, I admit I’m not sure how to keep it now. I don’t suppose you could direct me to any tools?”

An angry honk rattled behind the door.

“No, I didn’t think so.” He cast a glance around the floor, eyes landing on the rock he’d used to smash the handle in the first place. With a thoughtful hum, he bent to pick it up and turned it over in his hands. If it had broken the handle once, it could fix it now, or something like that. He was sure there was a saying about not fixing broken things. Or maybe it was not breaking fixed things. Or not fixing fixed things...

It didn’t matter. Rather than dwell upon it, he gripped the stone in both hands and remembered to say, “please stand back,” before smashing it down upon the handle. It made a terrible noise as it bent further, and the swan began to put up a racket again, but Aziraphale ignored it in favor of hitting the handle a few more times until it gave a tooth-aching squeal and fell off. On the other side, the swan began to rattle at the other handle while Aziraphale leaned in to inspect his work.

“I say, leave it alone, dear boy,” Aziraphale chided. “I think I can get it open, just give me a moment. I’ll need to fetch a bit of metal.”

With that, he left the door and the swan and hurried off to the kitchen. He had seen a lot of instruments there, cooking utensils and the like, and he was fairly certain what he needed could be found there. He pawed through several of the drawers, promising himself he would _organize_ them at some point so he could find things easier, before finally locating the drawer with a few long, thin pieces of metal in it. They had probably been fancy once, but the skewers had long been tarnished by use, and then disuse. He grabbed one up, tested its flex, and then made his way back.

“I’m going to open the door now,” he said, banging the flat of his palm against the door for good measure. “If you’d be so kind as to back up.”

He heard a bit of shuffling on the other side as he managed to get the skewer into the spindle of the mechanism. It wasn’t perfect, but with enough force, he managed to get it to grate its way into allowing the door to come free of the frame. It swung open faster than he had expected, but before he had any time to celebrate, the swan was rushing past and waddling indecorously down the hall away from him.

“You’re welcome!” he called after the swan.

Then he frowned, and followed, because the swan would probably like to be let outside, and while he had shown he likely knew how to open doors with his face, Aziraphale wanted to make sure he did so. An instinct which turned out to be correct, when instead of heading for an external door, the swan made a beeline for Uriel’s door and started trying to wrestle the handle into turning.

“Hey!” Aziraphale shouted, hurrying to close the distance.

Too late.

He heard the handle release the frame, and as the door swung wide, Aziraphale braced himself to deal with a riotous horse inside of a building. He was going to have to try to break up a fight. He was going to have to save the swan from the horse, or possibly save the horse from the swan. He was going to…

He blinked. Nothing happened.

The swan stood in the doorway, staring into the room, but no horse came charging out. No stomping or whinnying or warning grunts ensued. The swan dropped his head almost to the floor and made a soft, inquiring hoot that received no answer.

Aziraphale’s belly sank, and he closed the last few yards between them to peek into the room as well.

Uriel lay on the floor, unmoving. There was no sign of injury; she looked as though she had laid down upon the ground and just never gotten up again.

Something touched his hip and he looked down to find the swan with his head pressed gently against him. Aziraphale felt tears prickle in his eyes as he tentatively stroked fingers over the back of the swan’s head.

“You knew,” he said quietly.

That was the only explanation here. The swan had never been trying to attack the horse. He had never been trying to attack Aziraphale either; he had stood down as soon as Aziraphale was out of the building and on the run the first night. He had been perfectly fine sitting with Aziraphale in the grass on the other side of the lake, and only became aggressive as night fell. The swan had been trying to drive him away. He had been trying to protect him. And, ultimately, he had been trying to protect Uriel as well, and Aziraphale hadn’t listened.

This was his fault.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. The last few days were catching up with him much too quickly for the last straw to handle. “I’m so sorry. I should have listened. I should have…”

The swan rubbed soothingly at Aziraphale’s leg with his bill, and then gently grabbed hold of his fingers and tugged. Aziraphale followed, chest and throat still aching, cheeks wet and unable to stop himself from crying. As soon as they were free of the doorway, the swan released his hand and gave him a honk Aziraphale had no way to interpret before he began to waddle down the hall. When Aziraphale made to follow, the swan turned and raised his wings, so Aziraphale took the hint and stayed put, sinking to sit on the floor with his back against the wall.

It didn’t take long for the swan to return, waddling more carefully now, with something in his bill. Aziraphale pulled himself together, squinting with reddened eyes. As the swan approached, Aziraphale realized he carried a small shard of stone. His brow furrowed.

“What have you got there?” he asked.

The swan ignored him and waddled around him before stopping and looking at him expectantly. For a moment, Aziraphale stared back without a clue before the swan honked and Aziraphale found himself holding out his cupped hands to accept what was obviously a gift of some kind. He turned it over in his hands carefully, but it was just a piece of drab, grey rock. It could have been from any of the floors or walls.

“What is it?” he asked, looking up.

The swan looked pointedly at Uriel’s body and then back at Aziraphale, which told Aziraphale exactly nothing about anything. In a fit of what could only be described as exasperation, the swan gently plucked the rock off his palm and lobbed it equally gently at Uriel’s body as Aziraphale gave a shout of protest. It bounced off and skittered across the floor until it hit the wall, and the swan turned to look at him as if this meant something.

“I don’t know what you want,” Aziraphale told him, “but we’re not throwing rocks at dead horses.”

The swan hissed, and retrieved the rock to repeat the gesture from the far side of the room, and the rock tumbled to a stop at Aziraphale’s feet. He bent and picked it up, and gave the swan as judgmental of a look as he could muster.

“Stop that,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to give this back if you’re just going to be rude with it.”

The swan honked, and made a gesture which mimicked throwing the rock again. Aziraphale held it loosely in one hand and looked between the swan and the horse, and thought about how the latter was a result of not listening to the former. He could not imagine what throwing a rock in this situation would do to improve anything, but then a few days ago he couldn’t have fathomed what happened to Michael, or that Gabriel would run scared from a house, or that he would form some kind of weird friendship with a swan that was not really a swan.

So, he bucked up and tossed the pebble at the body, and watched it bounce off exactly as it had done before. He frowned when nothing changed, but the swan retrieved the stone and handed it back to him with patience this time. He gave a soft honk, and then held his head high just so before whipping it down, mimicking a very fast throw.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Aziraphale told him. “And that I’m not just obeying some clever wild animal that really hates horses.”

With that, he chucked the piece of stone hard, and jumped back with a noise very similar to the one Gabriel had made when the body before him instantly turned entirely to stone upon impact.

Aziraphale’s heart thundered so loud in his ears there may as well have been an arc of lightning in the room instead of a silent statue. His vision darkened around the edges and he only remained upright because he scrambled backed into the frame of the door instead of through it. He gasped for breath, eyes wide and flicking frenetically between the statue and the swan, who only stared levelly back at him.

This was what had happened to Michael. It had to be.

He had heard her smack a hand against something the instant before Gabriel had screamed. The impact must have triggered a defensive spell. Perhaps that explained the other statues as well, or at least, how they had been turned to stone, if not why, or why they had been here in the first place.

He swallowed and tried to force his muscles to unclench, only to find they began to tremble, his head spinning from the letdown.

“Sh-she- you-!” he managed, not sure what to say to this. “H- How?”

The swan simply stared at him. It wasn’t like Aziraphale had expected an answer.

“I- I- I think,” he started, and then stopped again. “This… _place_.”

The swan made a soft noise and waddled around the edge of the new statue. He stopped beside Aziraphale long enough to make sure Aziraphale was paying attention, and then he waddled out of the room, heading for the exit. Aziraphale stared, still horrified, still shocked, at the statue in front of him until the swan gave a honk. With a jump, Aziraphale grabbed the door handle and slammed the door shut behind him as soon as he was in the hall.

He would just… never go into that room again.

Which wasn’t, he told himself, going to cut it in the long run. He couldn’t just go bumbling about, making mistakes and closing the doors to pretend they never happened. If he wanted to stay here, he was going to have to learn something about this place. He was going to have to learn _a lot_ of things about this place because the dangers had just been made undeniably clear to him. Michael hadn’t lasted ten minutes before finding a magical trap, and something about this place had killed Uriel without leaving a single mark. Something that the swan had been expecting.

“Swan,” he said, as he opened the door for them to go to the outside. “Why did… do you know what killed the horse?”

At first he thought he hadn’t been heard, or that the swan would ignore this question, too, but then the swan fell still, head drooped, and… _sighed_. He gave a soft hoot, and looked askance at Aziraphale, and then up at the manor, confirming what Aziraphale had already guessed. Something was going on, and it was lethal, and the swan knew. The problem was that he had no way to tell Aziraphale, not fast enough to keep him safe, and guessing wasn’t going to cut it either. One mistake here could kill him in an instant.

But then… _he_ hadn’t died.

His fingers came up to brush against the amulet around his neck. It had, for his entire life, absorbed his own magic, but… perhaps it could absorb outside magic as well. Perhaps whatever had stolen Uriel’s life had been unable to affect him, an executioner’s axe stayed by his mother’s hand. His throat tightened at the thought.

He needed answers, ones he couldn’t find here until he had a better idea of what was going on. The swan might not be able to help him, but the village was not far from here and the fact that no one had come to take over this place meant that they probably knew something. At this point, anything was more than he currently knew.

“I’m not leaving,” he told the swan, which earned him a tilted head and a concerned trill. “But it’s obvious something has happened here, and I need to know what. I’m going to walk to the village, and I’m going to ask around about this place. Someone’s got to know something.”

The swan seemed doubtful, if such a thing could be seen on a swan’s visage, but rather than argue or try to stop him, he simply began to waddle over toward the lake. Aziraphale watched him cast off the edge and land in the water, bobbing gently. That was, he figured, as close to approval as he would get, so he ducked back into the manor long enough to empty one of Uriel’s saddle bags for travel, packing it with the money Michael had been carrying.

“I’ll be back tonight in time for dinner,” he told the swan as he crossed the bridge on his way out. “I’m going to solve this mystery, Swan.”

The swan honked back at him, and Aziraphale chose to believe that meant he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a minor character animal death, with Aziraphale finding Uriel dead.
> 
> This one was rough to write and I'm sure rough to read, and for me probably the worst (not worst written, but worst situation?) part of the story. But things will get better now that Aziraphale gets to learn what's going on!


	6. Chapter 5

“Miss Device?” he called into the dark interior of the shop.

It smelled of the same sort of stew he’d had the day before – had it really only been a day? - though not as strongly, and no candles graced the tables or shelves. The fire burned low and slow in the mantle where a pot hung, the same cauldron as yesterday, and filled with a dark, simmering liquid he was not entirely sure _was_ stew. He swallowed and dragged his gaze away from it to scan the back, but there was no sign of the bright little shopkeep that had helped him.

“Looking for something, Mr. Rose?” came a sweet voice from behind him.

He turned, flushing more than necessary with the guilt of being caught, and offered Anathema a repentant smile. “You, actually. I was hoping to get another bowl of your stew.”

She smiled, but it seemed tight and forced. “I’m afraid I haven’t got any work for you today.”

“Oh, no! No, I- I have coin today,” Aziraphale assured her quickly, producing the coin purse he’d taken from Michael’s belongings. It was enough to take care of whatever he would need for a few weeks; Michael, at least, had neither underestimated the time it would take to catch Aziraphale or overestimated her own abilities.

“Well!” Anathema said, brightening. “In that case, do come in. I haven’t quite opened up yet, but I know you’re not from around here, so I won’t make you wander until I am.”

“Actually, I hope to be,” Aziraphale said as he followed her into the shop and found a seat at the counter that would allow him to face her as she set down the package she carried. “From around here, that is.”

“Oh?” she said, pulling bread from within the package and setting it on a thick, wooden cutting board. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

He thought of the stone monsters, and the destruction in the library, and of Michael and of Uriel, and he sighed. “No,” he admitted, deflating a little, “but it’s what I am going to do.”

She pursed her lips and sliced the bread in silence until she was nearly halfway through it. “The town doesn’t… take well to newcomers. Visitors, maybe, but…”

“But not intruders,” Aziraphale finished for her. He understood that towns could be more family than some people’s blood family, and trying to settle within them had to be done with a lot more respect than usual. Fortunately, Aziraphale wasn’t trying to move into the town proper. “Actually, I had planned to fix up that old manor outside of-”

“NO!” Anathema practically shouted, followed by cursing as she dropped the knife to cover the cut she’d just given herself. “No,” she groaned, pressing one hand over the other and holding them to her stomach, shoulders taut. “You can’t- it’s not safe there.”

Aziraphale pulled a kerchief from his pocket and passed it to her over the counter. “You need to wash that,” he told her, ignoring the warning. “Have you got bandages?”

She gave a small, pained noise as she traded her hand for the kerchief, wrapping it around her thumb before it could bleed too much. Her eyes squinched shut. “In that chest,” she said, nodding vaguely in the direction of a small box sitting on a shelf nearby.

Aziraphale left the counter to grab it as she took herself over to a pot of water. Gingerly, she removed the kerchief and dipped the clean part of it into the pot and then wiped the damp cloth over the wound several times, clearing it of crumbs. When she had finished, Aziraphale applied some of the balm from inside the box, and wrapped it neatly with a small cloth bandage, tucking the end into itself so it would stay.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, obviously refraining from picking at the fresh bandage.

“It’s no trouble,” Aziraphale said. “I’m sorry I distracted you so. Would you let me cut the rest?”

“I can do it,” Anathema told him, a little hotly, and took a step toward the cutting board.

“Of course you can,” Aziraphale said, unmoving from where he now stood in front of it. “But you shouldn’t have to, and I don’t mind helping.”

For a second, it looked as though she might argue, and then she slumped her hip against the counter and nodded. Aziraphale took that as permission, and lifted the knife she had been using. He wiped the ridged edge of the blade off, and then began to cut the way the cook had taught him as a boy. Precise, even pieces began formed and in almost no time at all, he had the loaf sliced.

“You’re pretty good at that,” Anathema grudgingly admitted, sounding a little warmer toward him despite herself.

“My family hired a cook when I was young,” Aziraphale explained. “She was very good. Why is it unsafe? The manor, I mean.”

Anathema blinked, taken aback at the sudden shift. He had hoped to catch her off guard, but instead of answering automatically, she just stared, searching him for something. He glanced over, staring back without pressing further, until she let out a heavy breath.

“It’s cursed,” she said, and he actually laughed before he could stop himself. She made a guttural noise and rolled her eyes as she turned away.

“No!” Aziraphale hurried to stop her. “I didn’t meant to laugh, or rather I’m not laughing because… it’s just, I know _that_. It has been a _very_ long day since I last visited you.”

She gave him another searching look, dark eyes ticking over his, and he saw the moment she realized what he meant. “You’ve already stayed there. Overnight. How are you alive?” She took a step back, as though she thought the curse might have followed him, perhaps still coiled around him like a snake waiting to strike. “You should be dead.”

He recognized the look in her eyes, the same as Michael’s when she first found out he could do magic. For the first time, it occurred to him with a sinking feeling that perhaps these people _hadn’t_ appreciated magic any more than the folks in his own lands had. That the manor’s presence, and the magic there, might never have been a good thing, and its ruin might not have been an accident.

“I have an amulet,” he said, reaching under his tunic to pull it out for show, and hoping that it would not get him killed after he’d just finally escaped his siblings. “My mother gave it to me when I was a babe. I- I think it may have protected me.”

“An amulet,” she said flatly, and then held out her hand. “Let me see it.”

Aziraphale hesitated. He didn’t want to hand over the only thing that would allow him to stay at the manor unscathed, especially when he had no idea what she intended to do with it. If she stole it or, worse, broke it, he would have a difficult time staying. Which, he reckoned, might be her objective.

“I’m a witch,” Anathema added, exasperated. “Let me see it.”

“Oh,” he said, hesitating again. He had no idea if giving the amulet to a witch made it better or worse, but then, perhaps she would be able to tell him something about it. Maybe she could explain what his mother had not had time to. Deciding that he had to trust someone at some point, and she made as good a confidant as any, he pulled it off over his head and dropped the delicate coil of it onto her outstretched palm.

She let the chain dangle between her fingers as she brought it close to her face to look it over. The back of it got just as close a scrutiny, and then she opened a drawer under the counter. It was full of small glass jars with cork stoppers and he was pretty sure they contained herbs until she rather deftly opened one and pulled a pinch of what looked like flour out of it. Before he could protest, she rubbed it on the front of the amulet, and it flashed and sparked and almost seemed to leap out of her hand to clatter onto the counter.

Anathema coughed and waved her hands around to clear the acrid, burnt-hair smell from the air. “Definitely magical,” she choked out, even though he hadn’t thought that had been in question.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed, waving his own hands about rather uselessly. “Well I did tell you that.”

“Listen, plenty of people come in here telling tall tales about how they found a magical artifact and want some coin for it,” she said, coughing again. She made no move to recover the amulet. “Yours is the real deal though. I’ve never seen anything that powerful… who was your mother?”

“Lady Alma Rose,” Aziraphale said softly. “You wouldn’t know of her, and she’s recently passed away.”

“Oh,” Anathema said, soft around the edges. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, when she said this would protect you, she _really_ meant it. If you did stay overnight at the Crowley manor, this kept you alive, no doubt about it.”

That raised so many questions for Aziraphale. The manor had a name, for one, and Anathema knew enough about magic to possibly tell him some about his mother. She was an actual witch, an artifact one, which was more than he could possibly have hoped for as the first person he chose to speak to. One thing at a time, however.

“Can you tell anything else about it?” he asked. “What the spell is?”

“I can tell you it won’t let me pick it up again,” she said, gesturing at it as she stepped back to make room for him to fetch it himself. “It’s absolutely chock full of your energy and won’t tolerate anyone else using it. Beyond that… it’s been cast with corporeal magic. Not really my wheelhouse.”

The surprised him. He had always assumed the spell was an artifact cast, as it used an object. Aziraphale lifted the amulet and placed it back around his neck. It was warm to the touch and… throbbing, in a way that had nothing to do with the physical world. It felt almost angry, or maybe just defensive.

“I believe that it… absorbs my magic,” he offered up. “In my home land, magic of any kind is against the law, but especially corporeal magic. So much so that children born with it are often… not kept.”

“You kill _babies?_ ” she squawked.

“Not me!” Aziraphale said, raising his hands. “I don’t- I don’t know if they _kill_ them or not, but they aren’t allowed to stay within our- within _their_ borders, for fear of attracting elementals and wildern spirits. It’s the only way for humans to survive in those lands.”

“Obviously not,” Anathema said. “If your mother could give you an amulet and hide you, there could be others.”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale agreed because it was easier than explaining that would be hard for anyone born in his homeland to stay there; his mother had come to his father as young woman already, from a land that allowed magic. He figured it was best not to give information that would lead to more questions. “Will this protect me again, if I go back?”

Anathema considered it, and he could see her fingers twitching as if she very badly wanted to get a closer look at the amulet again. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “It depends on what kind of spell your mother used, and what kind of curse is on the manor. If your trinket absorbs magic, and the curse spends it, then… it should protect you indefinitely.”

“But?” Aziraphale asked. He could hear it in her tone.

“ _But_ ,” she said meaningfully. “If your amulet absorbs magic and the curse consumes it, then… well. It would only protect you for as long as the well is deep.”

“Wouldn’t the amulet just absorb the curse’s magic before it did that?” Aziraphale asked, confused. He had assumed magic was magic, and any sort of cast was an action which could be countered.

She made a face, the sort of face that said he’d asked a stupid but good question. “That’s… hard to say. In order to absorb magic, magic has to be pushing toward your amulet. But not all magic pushes. Some of it pulls. What do you know about that manor?”

“Nothing,” he said, still trying to work through the concept of magic pushing and pulling, “or nearly nothing. There’s a swan that lives there, and nothing else- _really_ nothing else. There are… _statues_ , in the halls in the shapes of monsters I think once lived. Something bad happened.”

“Worse than bad,” Anathema said. “It was so long time ago, no one is alive now was alive then. There’s a lot of rumors, and I don’t know which ones are true, but most of them agree that a sorcerer by the name Anthony Crowley lived there. What happened to him, what cursed the place, is the tricky part. Some people think he was killed when he got into a fight with another sorcerer. Some people think his own magic went wrong. That it killed him or turned him to stone or sent him to another world. There are even people who think he was the visitor, and that he killed the person who lived there.”

“And the swan?” Aziraphale prompted, trying not to seem overly eager, even though that was the main reason he had come here in the first place.

She shrugged. “It’s not a swan,” she said. “But you probably knew that. It’s been there since it happened. Some people say it was Crowley’s familiar. Some people think it _is_ Crowley. Others think it’s the rival sorcerer, or a demon only shaped like swan, and given its attitude and the other décor of the house, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m not sure it matters. What’s important, and the reason I asked, is that regardless of the story, the place is cursed. All most people need to know is that if they stay overnight they’ll die. Problem is – or at least _your_ problem is – that _whatever happened_ actually matters a great deal because you _didn’t_ die.”

“I… I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Aziraphale admitted. His head was spinning.

Anathema gave him a thoughtful look and then sighed. “You didn’t die,” she repeated. “But without knowing exactly what happened, there’s no way that I know of to tell _why_. And the why _matters._ If a rival sorcerer cursed the place to kill things on purpose, then that magic would push your amulet, and you’d likely be protected indefinitely. But… if Crowley messed up, and the curse is just a byproduct of whatever went wrong, if it just soaks up magic, or life, then that magic pulls. There’s nothing for the amulet to protect against because it’s just… a bigger amulet, so to speak. Yours would just empty into it.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, cottoning on at last. “And I take it I won’t know which way it is until the curse takes my life.”

Anathema nodded, lips pursed. “And even if it’s the latter, if you’re going to die of it, I couldn’t tell you when. You might have a few days there. You might have as many years as you’ve lived already, or as much magic has been used against you. There’s no way to know, without knowing what happened.”

Aziraphale let out a shaky breath. That was… a lot. He’d been on Death’s doorstep for two nights without knowing it, which he supposed was a nice change from the weeks prior, when he’d been on Death’s doorstep and been well-aware of it. It would be dangerous to go back, maybe even deadly. Or else it would be harmless, his mother’s spell protecting him. He didn’t know which option he hated more.

“You shouldn’t go back there,” Anathema told him after a long moment of silence, as if she had read his mind or, more likely, seen the debate on his face.

“I can’t stay here,” Aziraphale said softly. She’d said herself that the town didn’t take on newcomers easily, and he _had_ promised the swan he would return. “And I can’t go home. I’m afraid going back may be my best option at this point.”

“The world is a big place,” she pointed out. “There are lots of other places you could go, places that wouldn’t kill you.”

“Maybe,” he said, though his gut gave a twist at the thought, and the swan’s curious, golden eyes filled his memory. “But I… I feel like I belong there.”

She gave a soft snort. “Can’t argue with feelings.” From the counter, she grabbed a long, wooden ladle and pointed at the simmering pot of what had begun to smell much more like stew while they spoke. “That should be close to done, if you still want lunch?” she offered.

He broke out into a smile, despite the anxiety still churning within him. “That would be lovely.”

* * *

The swan awaited him in the water when he returned, paddling idly around the bridge, in and out of the shade it provided. He watched as Aziraphale crossed over, and didn’t climb out when Aziraphale disappeared into the manor, and he was still in the lake when Aziraphale returned a little while later with a bowl of warm porridge. Aziraphale set it on the ground a few feet away, making it clear it was not for himself, and then sat with his legs hanging over the edge of the bridge.

“So which is it?” he asked quietly as the swan stared up at him curiously and gave no indication whatsoever that he had understood the question. “Are you his familiar? A demon?” He bobbed a foot, but the swan’s attention stayed fixed on his face. “Were you a sorcerer that lived all alone here? Or are you the one who came to kill him?”

The swan didn’t answer.

Aziraphale sighed. “I talked to a woman in town,” he said, hoping that even if the swan wouldn’t answer, he would understand. It seemed fair, at least, to let him know that Aziraphale was here even though he understood the risks. “She said I might die if I stay here. She said my amulet protects me, but that there’s no way to tell how long that will be true.”

The swan gave a honk, dipping his head.

Aziraphale pursed his lips, and leaned back, resting on his hands as he stared up at the brilliant blue sky. Not a single cloud marred the expanse. “I want to stay,” he said, after a little while. “There’s magic here, and there’s magic in me, and… I think if I left, this place would only call to me the rest of my life anyway. No matter where I went, it would haunt me, and I’d rather be the one doing the haunting.”

He finally looked down, only to find the swan had paddled to the bottom of the rescue stairway, and begun to climb out. Aziraphale watched him wobble heavily up to the top, and toddle over to the bowl of porridge. He gave Aziraphale a studious once-over, and then ducked his head and buried his bill in the goop, gobbling down slurps of it and slopping it around. Aziraphale smiled.

“I suppose in the worst case, if I really do die,” he said as the swan ate, “I would be no worse off than I was before I came here. I’d have made a friend, at least.”

The swan paused at that, and looked up at him. Aziraphale looked askance back at him, still smiling, and the swan smacked his bill a few times, little pink tongue clearing porridge from its inside. Aziraphale wondered how long it had been since the swan had had a friend, if he had been guarding this place for as long as Anathema had suggested. He must have had to chase off everyone, no matter who they were or could have been to him.

What a lonely existence. Aziraphale wanted very badly to change that.

“We are friends, you know,” Aziraphale told him, “I made you food, and you ate it. Friends share food.”

Aziraphale was not sure what look the swan gave him at those words, but then the swan sank slowly down to the ground and bowed his head to shove the bowl closer to Aziraphale. Sharing, Aziraphale guessed, in agreement with Aziraphale’s assessment of friendship. Though not particularly keen on sharing quite that intimately with a bird, Aziraphale shifted enough to scoop a little of the porridge up on two fingers, and stuck it into his mouth. Somehow, he managed to contain his grimace; he would need to get better at making porridge, it seemed.

“It’s settled, then. I’ll stay, and you’ll be my friend, and I’ll try to figure out what happened here before it kills me,” Aziraphale told the swan, who stared a moment longer before resuming his meal, but slower now. Aziraphale turned his gaze back up to the wide, blue sky, the sun seeping warmth into his bones, and thought about how nice it would be to have a home again, even if it was only for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The magic in this chapter is that it looks like a lot of answers but they're really a bunch of questions. Whee!


	7. Chapter 6

The next morning, Aziraphale startled awake to a great, big, screeching HONK. His flailing tangled him up in the bedsheets, and he only just managed to keep from squirming right out of the small bed and onto the floor. Heart pounding, he sat and gave a wide-eyed stare to the swan standing in the doorway. The swan stared right back for a moment, and then bobbed his head, hissing in what almost sounded like… laughter.

“That’s not funny,” Aziraphale scolded, throat still rough with sleep. “Or _nice_.”

The swan hissed at him, and began to waddle away again. Aziraphale frowned after him, and then began the arduous task of untangling himself from the twisted sheets. He felt as though he’d been run over by a carriage; the swan had been up wailing in the middle of the night, loud enough it woke him and he couldn’t sleep until the silly thing had finally stopped. Now he was here waking Aziraphale before dawn had finished… well, _dawning_.

He pulled his tunic on and did up his trousers and put on his boots before following after the swan, who had come to a stop a little ways down the hall to wait for him. Together, they trudged through the manor, Aziraphale assuming that something important was happening, or had happened, or maybe was about to, only to find they stopped in front of the kitchen doorway. He frowned.

“ _That’s_ what this is about?” he asked incredulously, letting his annoyance bleed into his tone. “You want _breakfast_? You’ve been eating weeds and fish and things for ages, and you get _one_ bowl of…”

He trailed off before he could finish the sentence as he realized how exactly it would end. The swan _had_ been eating weeds and fish and whatever else he could find, and for goodness knew how long. Longer than a human lifespan, according to Anathema. Aziraphale swallowed. The bowl of terrible porridge yesterday had probably been the first food the swan hadn’t scavenged in decades. Aziraphale softened.

“Alright,” he said, “we’ll make breakfast, and then we have work to do. And since you know more about this place than I do, you don’t get to just swim around in the pond all day. You’re going to help.”

The swan drew back a little, his bill dropping open in such a clear picture of offense that Aziraphale couldn’t help but laugh. He stepped into the kitchen and over to the supplies he had brought home with him. There were plenty of utensils in the kitchen, pots and pans and spoons. He surveyed the food he had brought, and decided that it was not the morning for experimenting with porridge, and that the bread would toast nicely with some of the hen eggs he had bought. He’d even treated himself to a little of the dry bacon from a shop Anathema had taken him to. It was going out of season, so this was the last of the batch, but Aziraphale didn’t mind.

“If only I could send you out to pick some of those blueberries,” he said as he worked to get the odd, ancient little stove working. “Can you even pick a blueberry without breaking the skin?”

The swan gave a honk.

Aziraphale turned to look. “Is that one for yes?”

The swan honked again, dipping his head in a nod.

“Hm,” Aziraphale said, turning back to the food. “I suppose if I’m going to stay and you’re going to stay, we ought to have a conversation. Pity _you_ can’t ask _me_ questions, too.”

The swan let him make the rest of breakfast in silence while he thought about what, exactly, he wanted to know and whether or not he would be able to know it. He was desperate to know more about the swan, himself, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t get many answers. If he really was a cursed creature, he wouldn’t be able to talk about it, and probably wouldn’t be able to talk about anything even related to it, like what had happened before or after. Aziraphale had always hated that particular factor of curses, even if it did make a lot of sense; a curse wouldn’t be very useful if one could just go around telling someone it happened and asking them to fix it. He supposed if he were the one _casting_ the curse he’d be a lot more grateful for that condition than he currently was.

So Aziraphale thought about it while he cooked breakfast and they ate their food together in the courtyard and when they were finished cleaning up after themselves, he began to clean up other things, starting with the kitchen he had promised himself he would organize. The swan sat in the doorway with his feet tucked up under him, grooming feathers loose onto the floor that Aziraphale would have to sweep up at the end.

“That’s not very helpful,” he informed the swan, placing the last of the silverware neatly into a different drawer than he’d gotten them from, one with wooden dividers to keep the forks and knives and spoons separate from one another. “In fact you’re making it worse.”

The swan made a soft sound and didn’t even take his head out from where he was plucking feathery bits under one wing. Aziraphale sighed.

The rest of the kitchen went about the same and took a good portion of the day. The swan toppled a stack of wooden bowls Aziraphale had been making every time he found one in a strange place, and though Aziraphale started to berate him for making a mess, he quickly realized the swan was trying to grab a _specific_ bowl, and picked it up for him. After a ‘yes’ honk, the swan waddled off, stopping only long enough to ensure Aziraphale was following, and then led him off the isle, and down the way to a long stretch of wild asparagus.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said when he realized what he was looking at. He hadn’t brought a knife with him, so he’d had to tromp back to the manor and find a good one, and then they had roasted a bit of it with the butter he’d gotten, and taken a break for lunch.

After the last pot had been sorted and the last dish had been placed where he would remember to find it later, he swept up the dust he had disturbed and the feathers the swan had dropped, and decided the next step would be a proper bedroom for himself. He had stayed in two different ones so far, but neither of them had felt like someplace to live.

“Do you want to sleep inside with me?” he asked the swan as they left the kitchen behind. “Did you have a bedroom here?”

The swan didn’t answer either question, but he did honk twice at every room Aziraphale went to enter, until one on the border of the damaged section of the manor. Aziraphale pushed gently at the ajar door and peeked inside, eyes raking over the upset. Part of the room had experienced the catastrophe; the writing desk had made a desperate, failed attempt to flee the area, and one of the lamps beside it had bowed down as if melting.

The bed, however, looked intact, and with nicer covers than the ones Aziraphale had been using. It was bigger, made for more than one person, and the empty canopy structure above it spoke of times a bit more fancy. Beside the bed sat a bookshelf, stuffed full of books that didn’t look like the ones in the library. They looked… _loved_ rather than collected. On the far side of the room, away from the corner that had come to ruin, there lay a small wood stove, the sort that kept a room warm in the winter, and maybe provided a bit of light if the door stayed open. Beside it sat a plush chair with a footrest in front of it, close to where the stove would heat any feet set upon it. Aziraphale smiled.

“I suppose this was your room,” he said as he stepped inside. “Or, well, I suppose it belonged to whoever owned the place, at least.”

He glanced up to the framed portrait on the wall, of a man dressed in black and red, smoked glasses perched upon his nose and both of his hands resting on what looked like some kind of cane. Not quite a cane, Aziraphale thought as he looked closer, with its strange crystal top and the intricate carvings down the sides and the curled claws at the bottom. More like a wand, or a staff, perhaps. A caster’s tool, one used to direct corporeal magic. That had to be the lord of the manor, then. Anthony Crowley.

“He doesn’t _look_ like a sorcerer,” Aziraphale said, turning away. He wasn’t sure what a sorcerer was supposed to look like, but _handsome_ wasn’t it. He expected someone a bit more scary looking, given everything around him. Someone with gnarled hands and a bent frame and a snarl on his face, not the faint smirk that lingered on the painted man’s lips.

Then again, Aziraphale had never met a real sorcerer before. Maybe they had spells to look prettier than they were. Maybe they could stay young forever. He snorted at the idea. A lot more people would be sorcerers if that was true. Gabriel would have packed up and moved away to become one somehow.

“I suppose this is where you want us to stay?” he asked as the swan toddled heavily past him, heading for the bed. “Don’t you jump up there. We’re here to clean, not sleep.”

The swan gave an angry two honks, but he didn’t jump onto the bed. Instead, he swerved to the left and seized hold of the shade of the melted lamp and knocked the whole thing over. Aziraphale shouted in protest, but he was too late to keep it from clattering to the floor. The swan raised his wings and lifted his head up to hiss as Aziraphale tried to rescue the thing, but instead of attacking, he just went for the drawer handles of the writing desk. Aziraphale fumbled close enough to slam it shut with one hand before the swan could pull it out and spill the contents.

“Alright, I get it!” he scolded, keeping the swan at bay with one foot. “You can sit on the bed if you’re just going to be a menace.”

When the swan had given up and gone to sit on the bed, Aziraphale gently pulled out the drawers of the warped desk. They did not open more than halfway, and he was forced to swipe one hand around blindly inside to get all the papers and trinkets out. There was a dry inkwell and a bunch of feather quills – swan, ironically, though of a white variety – alongside of papers that looked like records of some sort. The scrawled handwriting spoke of haste or distaste, but what Aziraphale could parse read of supply lists and money notations. Things Anthony Crowley had needed, or perhaps things he had acquired. Useless lists, now.

Or perhaps not entirely useless, Aziraphale thought as he skimmed some of the older ones. While some of the pages held notes about barley and bread and fruit, or were receipts for things like candles or lumber or utensils, some of the lists were… different. Onyx, bloodstone, amethyst. Ox bone, wolf claws. Wormwood and adder’s tongue and foxglove root. Even Aziraphale recognized them, knew that they were used in artifact magic.

He ran gentle fingers over the page, so close and yet so far from their maker. Had he also been an artifact mage then? Would they still call him a sorcerer if so? Had he made artifacts for the village? Healed their sick? _Made_ their sick? Aziraphale had so many questions, none of which he could ask of a man dead so long ago. So instead, he separated the pages that seemed to hold spell ingredients from the mundane shopping lists, and put the latter atop the armchair near the stove, to be used to light it once the sun went down.

He went through the rest of the desk in that manner, until it was empty, and then dragged the desk into the hall. It was too warped for use, one side resting on false knees, toppled over in mid leap. He would break it into firewood and burn it down in the stove here or in the kitchen, and perhaps replace it with the one he’d seen the first day in the western wing. He didn’t have anyone to write to – he certainly wouldn’t be writing that letter to Raphael now – but he could keep track of the papers he had. He could splay a book upon it, when he was ready to look at some of the large, hand-bound tomes in the library. He wasn’t ready to spend enough time _there_ to look at them.

When he at last placed the lamp out beside it, intending to get rid of that, as well, he found that it was too late to do much else. He’d lost track of time looking at all of the papers, and even missed a normal dinnertime. His stomach gave a hearty growl as if to punctuate the point.

“Would you like to come get dinner with me?” Aziraphale asked of the swan. “Or shall I bring you dinner in bed, your majesty.”

The swan lifted his bill in a move as haughty as Michael had ever been and honked once, but in the next moment he wriggled to the edge of the bed and dove off as though the floor would be water. The ensuing scrabble to look dignified was anything but, though Aziraphale kept his laughter to himself because he did want the company.

Dinner was hardly anything to be impressed by, as he simply carved himself a few thick slices of salted meat and some of the hard cheese he had carefully wrapped up, piled them onto a slice of bread and accompanied them with a glass of wine. He wet some of the bread down for the swan, and covered it with the oatmeal he’d set to soak that morning for him, topping it with a few handfuls of blueberries they’d found while out for lunch. It did not look very appetizing but, cursed human or not, Aziraphale was fairly certain birds were not supposed to eat salted meat _or_ cheese.

He considered eating right there standing in the kitchen, but he found the thought of getting a little warm fire started before bed, and perhaps pawing through one of those books by the bed entirely too tempting. He rather precariously balanced everything in his arms and the swan wandered after him all the way back up to the room they had chosen. Aziraphale set the swan’s bowl on the floor, and his own on the chair, and his mug on the ground so it wouldn’t topple over.

Then he went out to the writing desk, and stood in front of it with his hands on his hips, surveying it. The legs were thin enough they could probably snap off by hand under enough pressure. The drawers were a bit more sturdy, but the only reason he hadn’t smashed them to get them out in the first place was to protect the contents. There was no reason to do so now, and the thin wood of their construction would make for good kindling.

“Drawers it is,” he said, and grabbed hold of the delicate metal handle that arched out from the front of the top one. It yanked out to halfway and something rattled within.

Aziraphale blinked. He’d cleared these drawers. He was sure of it.

He yanked again, and heard another rattle, one that didn’t sound like broken pieces of wood. He sighed and bent to wiggle a hand around inside. He couldn’t feel anything loose, which both satisfied his indignation and spiked his anxiety through the roof. The sudden drop in the pit of his stomach whispered about intangible things lying in wait.

Without meaning to, he jerked his hand back, hitting the top and bottom of the drawer as he attempted to extract himself. Something clattered within the drawer as he did so, bumping into his hand and leaving behind the chill, smooth sensation of brushing against a snake. As he startled away from it, he lost his balance and ended up on the cold stone floor, heart pounding.

In the doorway, the swan watched him.

“Don’t you start,” Aziraphale muttered, staring at the desk. “Something’s in there.”

The swan shook his head with a snort, and waddled closer. He peeked into the drawer, head going this way and that, and then he grabbed hold of whatever had come loose, and pulled out. Aziraphale leaned to one side to look, and realized just exactly how foolish he’d been to panic. In his bill, the swan grasped a pair of spectacles, the glass smoked over and the ear pieces curled into deep circles.

Aziraphale held out a still-trembling hand, chiding himself to get over it, and the swan dropped them into his palm. Carefully, as they were very old, Aziraphale unfolded the arms and turned them over a few times, a growing sense of recognition niggling at the back of his mind before he remembered the painting in the bedroom. They were the same ones.

He got to his feet and looked into the room to be sure, holding the glasses up where he could compare. They were identical, he thought, and then his focus slipped to the eyes he could see peeking over the tops of the ones in the painting. Golden, with black slits down the center.

 _Oh_ , he thought as he realized what it meant.

He recognized those eyes, too. He’d seen them over and over in the last few days.

“It’s you,” he said softly, turning to look at the swan. “You’re Anthony Crowley.”

The swan – Anthony – just stared back up at him in silence, but he knew he was right. This was no familiar, no demon, no passerby. His picture was right there on the wall, a human face to the name he’d only heard, a human name to the face of the bird before him.

“Well,” he said. “I suppose that’s one question answered, and a thousand more that you can’t.”

Anthony gave a single honk, and Aziraphale just sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, we all knew it right?? Now we get to the fun part.


	8. Chapter 7

Aziraphale sat on the edge of the rickety dock that extended along the back of the manor. Unlike the bridge, which had been built of some kind of deeply black stone, the dock had been made of wood and must not have been maintained even when someone lived here. Algae had climbed up to meet the moss along the top, and the metal was more rust than iron. It had held up when Aziraphale had stepped out onto it, however, and so he found himself sitting upon the end of it with his lunch.

Crowley paddled in the water around his feet, snatching up the peas Aziraphale tossed gently into the water near him. Aziraphale had asked him what he preferred to be called and gotten one honk to his last name instead of his first. Some of the deep southern lands did that, and Aziraphale wouldn’t have been surprised to learn Crowley was not from around here, either. Given what Anathema had told him about the close-knit community of the town, it would be strange for none of them to know anything about Crowley if he’d been one of them. More than likely he had come here to get away from something, too.

He seemed a lot more relaxed now that Aziraphale had at least figured out who he was. They had spent the morning breaking down the writing desk into pieces and carefully hewing a few stone pieces to fit into the area of the floor the catastrophe had touched. Aziraphale had put a rug over the ugly patch job for now. He would need to make or buy some kind of proper mortar for it, and fix the walls behind it, but that would likely require a trip to town and possible assistance Crowley couldn’t give.

“Mr. Rose?”

Aziraphale lifted his head, dragging his thoughts away from how he was going to get a new desk upstairs, and looked at Crowley. Rather than give away their position, he began to glide for the front of the manor, and Aziraphale scrambled heavily to his feet. He recognized the voice as Anathema’s, though he couldn’t imagine what she was doing here. He was certain he hadn’t forgotten anything in the shop, as he didn’t really have things to forget. Given her reaction, perhaps she was only worried for him.

“Back here,” he called back, hoping that Crowley would count that as an invitation and not try to drive her away immediately. “Stay there please!”

Thankfully Crowley stayed in the water as Aziraphale crossed through the house to get to the front. Anathema stood waiting at the end of the bridge, her back to the manor and her attention fixed upon Crowley in the water below her. She turned when she heard the door open, and offered Aziraphale a hesitant smile.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as soon as he wouldn’t have to shout. He hadn’t meant it to come out so incredulous, but she had very strongly cautioned him against coming back, and now here she was.

“I came to check on you,” she said, which was an obvious lie she immediately corrected with: “Well, I came to see if I could help you. I’ve always wondered about this place, but I didn’t really want to come here alone.”

“Oh dear… I-I’m afraid that even with my company, it’s a very good idea for you to be here,” he began.

“Then it’s a good thing it’s not really up to you, isn’t it?” she interjected before he got any further in turning her away. “Since you’re just visiting too, you don’t technically own the place.”

“No,” Aziraphale agreed, gesturing to Crowley in the water below. “Technically _he_ owns the place. Allow me to introduce Anthony Crowley.”

She looked where he had indicated, but did not seem to be particularly surprised – likely because she had long since guessed as to Crowley’s predicament, or at least truly understood the possibility. She probably understood it better than Aziraphale did, if he were being honest with himself about it, and if he’d been slightly less flabbergasted at her arrival he might have had a few more warning thoughts about that fact and how it related to her presence. As it was, he did not.

“ _He_ ,” Anathema said, drawing out the word as she gestured to Crowley as well, “is currently a swan, and swans cannot own places.”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, who just opened his wings a little and honked. She was, technically, correct. “That’s a fair point,” Aziraphale said, turning his attention back to her. “But I feel that it fails to take magical curses and swans who used to be people into consideration.”

“Can’t win ‘em all,” she said, and then shrugged a little. “Though I suppose if neither of you want my help breaking this little curse, I can just go home. I don’t _have_ to teach you magic.”

Aziraphale hesitated. Magic?

“I _am_ a witch, you know,” she reminded him, pressing on. “And magic is in your bones, Mr. Rose. And… if _he_ _,”_ she said, nodding down toward Crowley, “really does own this place, or really did, then I suspect you’re going to need some help learning how to use that magic to fix his little situation. Get him back to human and all.”

“You can… is that even possible?” Aziraphale asked. “To undo the spell?”

Of course he knew that all spells could be broken _during_ casting, if the caster were interrupted. Everyone knew that, even in the north, because it was often the only way to save oneself once a creature started casting at you.

But he also knew that magic was a bit like making a pie; it was not just a matter of putting all the ingredients together and baking it. It had to cool down afterward. Children were told, from a very young age, that if they found themselves the subject of an unwanted spell, to immediately locate an adult and inform them, because often it could be destroyed if it hadn’t set. While humans in the north were no particular threat in that department these days, there were plenty of wild creatures that left magical snares behind, or things which had absorbed the latent magic of an area, or artifacts leftover from days long gone, when magic was widely used. More than a few children had gotten themselves into a spot of trouble setting off spells that didn’t even have a cast to interrupt, but were saved by the grace period if they acted swiftly.

But that grace period was normally very small, the matter of an hour or two. Anathema had told him whatever happened here, no one was left alive that remembered it, which meant it had been decades since its casting. Whatever spell had been put on Crowley, it surely had become permanent by now.

“Undo?” she echoed, with a little laugh. “I don’t think undoing it would- no, but I’m sure we can find _another_ spell to cast over the top of it. We don’t need to undo him being a swan if we can turn him into a human.”

A minute hope trembled through Aziraphale at the suggestion. He could learn magic. He could learn magic, and they could turn Crowley back, and then Crowley would almost certainly accept if Aziraphale asked to stay. It would be safe – completely safe – for him to do so then, to stay here and live away from his family. No more curse, no more stone traps. Just a home. He looked down to the water where Crowley sat looking back.

“Well?” he asked. “Shall we let her stay? Set you free?”

One honk for yes.

* * *

After sharing lunch and showing Anathema around the safest parts of the house, they sat in the kitchen and established ground rules. She would come in the morning and help with breakfast, and then they would spend the first part of the day cleaning together. Dusting, scrubbing, moving things, and sorting through what they had that could be used still. After they broke for lunch, they would spend whatever daylight was left teaching and learning magic. She was to leave the premises before dark, to avoid being killed by the curse.

She was skeptical of how she could spend all day here, when she needed to pay for her shop and her home, but Crowley joined in on the effort by donating a small, golden trinket from elsewhere in the house. Anathema turned it over in her hands a few times, assessing it, and then asked Aziraphale what she was supposed to do with it.

“Why, I think you’re meant to sell it,” he said, and Crowley agreed once. “I can’t imagine there’s much here that’s of use to him, until he has thumbs again, and you’re the only way that’s going to happen.”

She stared at Crowley for a long, silent moment, before setting the trinket carefully upon the thick wooden table. “He really isn’t just a swan, is he.” Aziraphale knew she wasn’t asking, so he just smiled. “I suppose some part of me thought you were just… messing around. That you saw an opportunity to take a house and a bunch of land for free or something, and I was going to play along until I caught you. But he really is a person.”

“One in need of help,” Aziraphale agreed gently. He didn’t mind the subtle accusation of his character; he was, after all, a stranger, and he _had_ basically just set up shop here without so much as a by-your-leave. It wasn’t _her_ house, but it mattered to her for some reason. “Your help, and possibly mine.”

“Almost certainly yours,” Anathema said, raising her eyes to meet his. “Artifact magic alone can’t perform a curse like this. But… corporeal magic shouldn’t, either. At least not on its own.”

“Then… you believe it to be a combination?” Aziraphale asked. It would make sense; he had found ledger papers with artifact magic tools practically underneath the painting of Anthony Crowley with a corporeal magic tool.

Anathema nodded. “I think it has to be. Corporeal magic could turn someone into a swan, but there’s no way that would also kill people who stay here, or do all that nonsense in the east wing. I don’t really know what could. What I mean is… I can teach you about artifact magic, but… that only goes so far.”

“Then we’ll likely need to get to the library,” Aziraphale said. He didn’t have to explain _what_ library; he’d shown her the edge of the house’s cataclysm. She had been considerably more horrified than Aziraphale. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay out here and let me bring the books out so we can sort through them. I can’t have you turning to stone or worse.”

She made a face and sat back with a frustrated sigh. “That _would_ be inconvenient for both of us,” she joked, although it felt a bit weak. “I guess you’re right. I’d love to go visit, but I have no idea where to even _begin_ to break those traps to make it safe enough to do so.”

Crowley gave a hiss and raised his wings a little, drawing both their attention. “Hm. He might,” Aziraphale said, the idea already growing on him. Rather than carry all the books out, if he could find the right information, he could just clear the path.

“Unfortunately _he_ can’t tell us anything,” Anathema pointed out. “Even if he could talk about the curses at all, we can only ask yes or no questions, but that means we’d have to know _which_ questions to ask, and we don’t.”

“No, we don’t,” Aziraphale agreed. “But I believe it’s actually only his _own_ curse he can’t talk about, and I don’t think the traps in the hall are directly related. It’s possible, even _probable,_ that they were cast on the same day, but he was able to show me how to use one of the cursed objects to… well, you saw the horse. He may not be able to tell us how to break _his_ curse, but he may be able to tell us about the rest of it.”

“Or at least show you to the books so we don’t have to search through all of them,” Anathema said, sitting up straight to look down at Crowley as she caught on. “Would that work? Could you show us – him – the right books? Can you teach him about the curses in the hall?”

Crowley gave a single honk.

“Alright!” she exclaimed, pleased. “That settles it, then. I’ll teach you about magic after we’ve done a bit of cleaning, and you two can brave the cursed wing to get the books he'll need to teach us the magic that can break the curse.”

“Pardon me, _he_ will?” Aziraphale echoed. He had not planned to learn magic from a swan. He had figured it would involve more hands than that. "I thought you were the teacher here?"

“Well, I can teach you artifact magic, but he’ll have to at least help with the corporeal stuff,” she explained, as if it made perfect sense. “He’s the only one here that knows enough about it. I have to admit that's part of why I came... I'd like to learn as well, even though I can't cast it.”

She was, he decided, forgetting for the moment that Crowley could barely answer yes and no questions, and that learning magic almost certainly required more, but he was not about to bring that up now. It could wait until after she had taught him more about artifact magic. Maybe by then, he would have a better idea of which questions to ask. Maybe by then she’d be proven right, and the books would make yes and no sufficient guides.

“It won’t be easy,” she continued, “but I think we can do it. What do you think?”

“I think,” he said slowly, looking between Anathema and Crowley, “that this is quite the auspicious beginning to a very strange new team.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been a rough month here for depression but I believe I am on the upswing! I hope everyone else is doing well and getting ready for the month of Halloween.


	9. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEADS UP: There's another minor character death and an animal death in this chapter. I will add spoilers to the end note again.

Learning magic did not go the way Aziraphale had thought it would. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what he had imagined, but it was not long walks around the fields and woods near the manor with Anathema picking flowers and leaves and berries and twigs, with an enormous black swan waddling around after them. It was definitely not having to carry the pack and the bucket she wanted to put it all in, either.

“They’re artifacts,” Anathema told him when he asked.

“They’re _plants_ ,” Aziraphale pointed out, waving the latest twig she had handed to him. Crowley snapped it up in his bill before Aziraphale could accidentally whap him in the face with it. Aziraphale frowned at him when he hissed. “Oh hush, you don’t even need to be here. We’re going to bring all of this back, you could have just waited for us at home.”

“He’s learning too,” Anathema said, glancing back to look at Crowley instead of Aziraphale, and Crowley honked once in affirmation. “I believe he was a corporeal mage. They may know a little bit of artifact magic as well, but most of it would be fairly redundant.”

Aziraphale took the twig away from Crowley and filed it into the satchel with the rest of the twigs. “Redundant?”

“Yes.” Anathema walked on and they followed. “Most spell effects are shared between corporeal and artifact magic. Imagine that you want to… I don’t know, warm a mug of tea. Both magics can do it, but someone with corporeal magic can just do it. Just… will it to be hot or something, and it becomes hot. I’m not entirely sure since I’ve never done it.”

Crowley honked a few times, which meant nothing to either of the humans, though Aziraphale expected that if it did, they would know a lot more about the nature of corporeal magic at the moment. They were going to have to figure out a way to speak to him. Maybe there was a spell for that.

“What about artifact magic?” Aziraphale asked.

“To do the same thing with artifact magic, you’d need to collect the right spell ingredients, know the right sigils, and possibly be able to pronounce the right words. It’s...”

“Complicated?” Aziraphale offered. It certainly sounded complicated to him. It would, it seemed, be easier to just light a fire and warm the tea with it. Perhaps in a way that was a form of artifact magic in itself.

“To say the least,” Anathema agreed. “Which is why artifact magic isn’t commonly used. It’s just not worth it for most everyday needs. People use it for doing things that don’t have mundane shortcuts, like telling fortunes or blessing crop fields, or locking up important things. Cursing people that have annoyed you. Stuff like that.”

Aziraphale made a noise of acknowledgment. It made sense. “But there are differences. There must be.” He looked over at Crowley and gestured. “You had corporeal magic, but you wanted to learn artifact magic. I saw your ledgers, in the bedroom. You were buying strange things.”

Crowley dipped his head, somehow managing to look embarrassed, but Anathema saved him. “Corporeal magic can only do so much, because it draws on a person’s own energy to cast.”

“It steals their life?” Aziraphale asked quietly, belly sinking.

Anathema’s step faltered, and she stopped, turning to look at him. “I don’t… I don’t think so, not quite. Not… like you’re thinking. I hope.”

Crowley honked twice and shook his head for good measure, and both humans relaxed a little.

“From what I understand, it uses energy, not life force,” Anathema explained slowly. This was clearly not her wheelhouse. “The bigger the spell, the longer you have to sleep or the more you have to eat afterward, like if you did a bunch of running around or something. Which also means there’s limits. Some spells require more energy than one person has… but that’s another way corporeal magic differs from artifact magic. A group of corporeal mages can cast a spell together; an artifact mage can’t. We can only use the magic that is available in the artifacts and the surrounding area, not life forces. _But_ ,” she added significantly, “some places in the world have more magic than a hundred corporeal mages put together. So, a lot of corporeal mages travel, and a lot of artifact witches settle near hot zones.”

“What about someone who is both?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley had been a corporeal mage, but he had clearly settled into the manor before his untimely curse took effect. Perhaps there was great magic where the manor stood, and he had intended to access it.

Anathema’s gaze unfocused as she thought about that, and then she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. I’ve never seen anyone that was both. I’ve only met one corporeal mage, and she was only passing through. Oh here!” she exclaimed, dropping down to pluck at some of the small plants around the base of a tree. “Solomon’s seal. One of the best for locking things up.”

Aziraphale accepted the veritable handfuls she snapped from their bases and bundled them into the bucket. It overflowed some, and he put a hand on top of them to keep them from falling. “Perhaps we ought to head back,” he suggested, tipping his chin up to indicate the sky. “It will be getting on dusk by the time we get in.”

She glanced upward, as if only just noticing the time, and then sighed. “I suppose you’re right, and I still need to teach you how to prepare them.”

With that, she brushed past between them and headed off toward the manor with just as much determination as she’d left it. Aziraphale looked at Crowley, eyes a bit wide, but Crowley only raised his wings a little, and then began to toddle along after her. Aziraphale gave a resigned sigh, adjusted his luggage, and followed them both.

* * *

Three weeks into their arrangement, they had finished dusting and sweeping and clearing the western wing of the manor. This was not, strictly speaking, a particularly daunting task as almost all of the rooms were empty at the start. What little furniture they did find, they placed into two rooms- one piled high for storage, and one arranged artfully for study.

The latter began as the room Aziraphale had locked Crowley in during his first overnight stay, and so there had been a bit of repair to do before they could outfit it properly. Now it stood in tidy order, with a mostly-empty and well-filed bookshelf that Anathema had cleared out of books she could sell, a writing desk, a long table, and two lounges that had been the most comfortable-looking of the lot.

They had spent the last few days clearing a path between the end of the bridge and the road so that Aziraphale could have a straw pallet delivered. The effort had earned them a lot of drying plants, a few types of useful stones, and the discovery that there did, indeed, used to be a road between the manor and the road. This should not have been as much of a surprise as it was, but the area flora had thoroughly overtaken it to the point of complete obfuscation.

The pallet had come the day before, wrapped in coarse burlap. The man who arrived in a donkey-drawn cart to deliver it explained that it would need to be covered with something softer before being slept on, or it might produce rashes. Aziraphale promised he would, a promise he immediately broke by setting the pallet on the floor in the corner of the study with nothing atop it. Nothing, at least, until Crowley climbed aboard and sat to listen to Anathema’s lessons about sigils and runes and herbs and materials.

The kitchen, while enthusiastically used to create actual food, was also now full to the brim with drying herbs and leaves and twigs and sprigs, as well as bowls of stones and other small objects. The first spell Anathema showed them was one for a cold box; a spell which Crowley had clearly cast before, as there was a large stone basin along one wall of the kitchen that seemed to be made for exactly that purpose.

“It’s so cold.” Aziraphale dipped his hand past the lip of the basin and into the chilly interior. He had seen ice before, and snow. This wasn’t quite as cold, but it would almost certainly preserve meats for much longer than usual. “How long will it last?”

“A while,” Anathema said, shooing his hands away and replacing the thin, pounded-metal lid. “The spell doesn’t actually take much energy; it draws from sunlight during the day and goes dormant at night, letting the stones keep it cold until the sun returns. As long as you don’t have too many rainy days in a row, it should hold indefinitely.”

Aziraphale laid his hands on top of the metal, feeling the chill as it seeped through, and the current of the magic that made it work. He could feel the flow of it, and its intention, and its casting. It was a living thing in its own right, brought into being by Anathema’s careful crafting.

Beneath that, he could feel older versions of the spell, like a layer of dust or the bedrock beneath a foundation. The basin felt like a riverbed, carved by the water that had passed through it before. He could see, now, what Anathema had tried to explain to him, how an object could become used to taking certain spells more readily. It explained how some objects in nature took on the magic that surrounded them, spreading and containing the magic within themselves in ways that allowed them to be used in artifact magic. Plants, through generations, remembered the magic which their predecessors had found the most beneficial. Stones collected energy to be released later. Even animals, to some degree, took magic into their bodies, stored it in their bones and teeth and fur, even flesh and blood. Even humans, he supposed; what else could corporeal magic be, if not magic that a human body had collected?

“And it… this was one of the ones you cast before?” he asked, just to be sure he was right.

Crowley honked once from where he sat in the doorway, dipping his head down low. There was, Aziraphale thought, more to the story.

“And you cast it as artifact magic,” he continued slowly. “Because… it’s continuous instead of a finite cast.”

Beside him, Anathema beamed and Crowley tossed his head up and back with a single, proud honk that turned into a silly _waugh_ noise. Aziraphale felt a little rush of pleased pride course through him. He had learned a lot about the basics of artifact magic and what Anathema knew of it comparatively. He was not quite ready to cast on his own, but it would be soon.

“This one wouldn’t drain a person much, I don’t think, but the little things add up.” Anathema clambered to her feet and dusted off her trousers. “I think I’m going to head home a bit early.”

Aziraphale did a poor job containing his smile. “You know,” he said, grin seeping into his voice enough to earn him a look, “you could just bring the young man here with you.”

Anathema scowled at him. “He’s got a farm to run,” she said, more primly that she had any right to be.

“We could use a farmhand,” Aziraphale said, getting to his feet now as well. “Why, just last night Crowley told me he wanted a garden ‘round the back, and an orchard for the fall. There’s one already started.”

Crowley honked twice, betraying him, and Anathema pointed at him as if presenting evidence. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m sure you two can find some kind of trouble to get up to with a free evening.”

Aziraphale pulled a bit of a sour face at that, but he didn’t really mean it. It might be nice to have a night of rest. By the time Anathema left most evenings, they had spent all day cleaning and then learning, and he was bone tired. He would boil some water for a bath to clean himself, and then pick a book from the shelf beside the bed, and read to Crowley until he fell asleep. It was not particularly exciting, but it felt nice to have such a comforting pattern. Breaking it felt like doing something wrong.

Still, he watched Anathema leave with a little bit of excitement. He didn’t get much time alone with Crowley while the sun still shone.

“A whole afternoon to ourselves,” Aziraphale said as he began to tidy up the ingredients they’d used to create the cold storage box. “We could clean in the east wing, or clean up some of the orchard. Oh! Maybe you could take me to the library while we still have light!”

Crowley honked and made a beeline for the bread on the counter. Aziraphale fought the instinct to stop him, instead watching as he touched it with his bill and then touched a few other items for good measure. He wasn’t hungry, or shouldn’t be- they’d just eaten.

“Dinner plans?” Aziraphale asked as Crowley walked past him and knocked over the bucket they had used to gather herbs. “Oh, I see. You want to take food out?”

One honk.

Aziraphale beamed. “Well,” he said. “I think I would very much enjoy a walk and a picnic with you.”

* * *

Despite the heat of summer seeping into everything, the evening was actually quite nice outdoors. Puffy white clouds filled the pale blue sky, passing over the falling sun just often enough to make it tolerable. A gentle breeze blew over the chilly lake before reaching them on the other side, bringing the perfect amount of relief with it. Aziraphale had made food for the both of them – sandwiches and chopped fruits and vegetables, sprouted grains for Crowley and the last of the sweet pastries Anathema had fetched for them – and put it into the basket now hanging over his arm. He had placed a small satchel around Crowley’s neck and onto his back, into which he had placed several of the harder to find herbs along their way out, to be dried and cataloged more carefully when they returned.

“There’s a field this way,” Aziraphale told Crowley for the fifth time as they picked their way through the clearest sections of brush. “I promise there is. I passed it on my way to your house that first night.”

Crowley snorted, shaking his head in what felt like laughter, and Aziraphale contained a sigh of lament.

“In truth, we may be chasing our tails,” he admitted finally. “I do remember running through an open space, and I thought I’d come from this direction. It _is_ the fastest route to get to my homeland. But maybe… not...”

Even as he said the last word, he stumbled into an open field full of wildflowers and meadowgrass. Crowley came around his legs and continued walking ahead of him, unfazed by the change. He had probably known it was here, Aziraphale reasoned, blinking in the sudden sunlight no longer dappled by the trees.

“If we were going the wrong way, would you have told me?” he asked as he followed after the waddling swan. “Would you have stopped me walking us all the way out here? Would- oh!”

He froze, heart rabbiting in his chest as he caught sight of the campsite across the clearing. He recognized Gabriel’s tent material, even at a distance, but there had been no sign of him for weeks. A strike of fear jolted down Aziraphale’s spine at the thought that this was it. Gabriel had returned for him. Gabriel had returned and he was here and he would kill Aziraphale, or at least drag him home to be killed, and all of this would end.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said urgently, trying to keep his voice down. Obviously Crowley had not seen the camp. They needed to get out of here. Maybe there was still time to run.

Crowley lifted his head, long neck rising above the grass and swiveling to see what the fuss was. At Aziraphale’s frantic gesture, he looked across at the camp, and fell completely still.

“Come on you silly bird,” Aziraphale hissed. “Before he gets back.”

Crowley hooted softly, but didn’t move from where he stood.

Frowning, Aziraphale gathered himself together and started toward Crowley, intending to drag him away if he had to. “You’re going to be the death of us both if you don’t come along. He could be… back… at…” He trailed off, coming to a stop beside Crowley.

The empty camp was not at all empty.

The picnic basket fell from nerveless fingers and then Aziraphale covered his mouth with both hands. It was Gabriel. It had to be, even though there wasn’t much left that might prove it. Sandalphon, or what the scavengers had left of him, lay tethered a few yards further on, meadowgrass growing up thick around him. From here, Aziraphale could see the edges of Gabriel’s gaudy purple saddle, discolored where unspeakable things had seeped into it.

They were dead.

The thought ticked over and over in his head, unable to grain traction.

Gabriel was dead, and by the look of it, had been for a while.

Aziraphale swallowed, mouth dry.

Gabriel was dead, and he had to have been dead for _weeks_ to look like this. It _had_ to have been the curse, even so far from the manor. There was no way Gabriel could have made it home and back; he must have bedded down here that first night, maybe to regroup, maybe to mourn Michael, maybe just to hide. Maybe to reconsider how to get Aziraphale out of the cursed manor. Whatever had happened, he had clearly never made it away from the manor’s grounds, and the curse apparently reached to every border.

Which was all to say, Aziraphale realized with a strange mixture of relief and guilt, that no one from Aziraphale’s old life knew where he was anymore. Gabriel couldn't have gotten them word from here.

No one would come for him. No one _could_.

Aziraphale was _safe._

He jumped at the gentle touch of Crowley’s bill to the edge of his hand, and his fingers automatically curled to smooth over the top of Crowley’s head, over the tiny, silky feathers there. He swallowed again, trying to find words that weren’t there, and felt his throat close up and his belly jumped with a silent sob. He dropped a second later, knees barking on the dirt as guilt and relief and grief and joy all smashed together squarely in the middle of his chest.

It felt like a dam breaking. It felt _good_ , in the worst way.

He was free.

Crowley pressed in close, long neck draping over Aziraphale’s in comfort, and Aziraphale clung to the one stable thing left to him, and finally allowed himself to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler notes: Aziraphale finds Gabriel and Sandalphon dead to the curse in this chapter.
> 
> WELL. Some of you had wondered when/how Gabriel would return, but they unfortunately didn't stand much of a chance. I am excited about this chapter despite how long it took me, because there are CLUES in this chapter. So many clues. I have cookies for those who pick them out, even if you don't know where they are going yet!


	10. Chapter 9

Aziraphale sat slumped in the plush armchair across from Anathema’s lounge, the excited buzz of his first successful spell long gone and a bit of a roiling tummy setting in. She had her booted feet up on the ornate arm of the lounge, her skirts bunched up around her hips with no indication that she cared. Upon the floor lay scattered four empty bottles of wine, with the fifth perched precariously close to the edge of the writing desk near her head. Aziraphale was staring at it, willing it not to fall as Anathema listed off all of the flowering plants she knew, along with their properties.

She was somewhere in the H’s, and Aziraphale was just beginning to doubt his ability to care past the J’s when she stopped.

“Is that all of them?” Aziraphale asked. He was fairly certain it was not. She hadn’t said anything about roses or lilies or snowdrops after all.

“It’s not even _half_ of them.” Aziraphale decided the reproach in her voice was enough to keep him from asking any more questions. “But it’s funny, you know? Heliotrope doesn’t grow native around here. Has to be… uh… what’s it called. Brought- brought- _imported_.”

“Imported,” Aziraphale echoed, as though that had made something clear. It certainly had _not_ , but she was rolling somewhere and he didn’t want to stop her.

“So where’d they come from?” Anathema asked, waving her empty glass. “The stuff you used tonight, we picked that just last week, right outside!”

Aziraphale’s wine-sticky thoughts made a commendable attempt to pull together a cohesive thought. “From the ledger, I suppose,” he said.

“What ledger?” Anathema twisted so she could look at him, a motion which put her very close to falling off the lounge.

“The...” He waved a hand as if he could produce the notes from thin air by doing so. “The ledger, with the- the things. I’m sure I told you.”

“What things?” Anathema demanded. “What ledger?”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, opening them again immediately when the world spun. He was sure he’d told her. Or perhaps he had only mentioned it. She hadn’t asked him about it though. Perhaps she had thought Crowley was only _interested_ in artifact magic, not that he’d _practiced_ it. Maybe she thought if he knew how to use it, he wouldn’t have stayed stuck as a swan.

“Upstairs,” he said carefully. “In the desk. There are ledger papers. Accounts of… er… stones and plants and… magic things. He bought them and, presumably, had them brought here.”

Anathema engaged in a vicious battle with gravity in order to prop herself up on one elbow and look down the lounge to where Crowley sat upon his straw pallet, watching them both. “What was a swan doing buying artifacts?”

“I assume he did it when he had hands,” Aziraphale said over Crowley’s chuff. “Back before all… this.”

“But he was a- a corpre… a core… corporeal mage.” Her brow furrowed and then her eyes narrowed. “The only reason you’d need artifacts is for something big. Like, _really_ big.”

That was a good point, or it seemed like it was, but then, opening the fifth bottle had seemed like a good idea, too, and Aziraphale’s stomach was preparing to disagree with that judgment. “Like… destroy half a manor and turn yourself into a swan big?”

Crowley hissed, low and angry, head lifted.

“Exactly like that,” Anathema said, sounding suddenly a lot more sober.

Aziraphale looked over at Crowley, taking in the literally ruffled feathers and threatening posture. He hadn’t been so upset since the night Aziraphale had first arrived. Apparently he didn’t like this particular vein of thought. Aziraphale couldn’t blame him; it didn’t make Crowley look very good.

“Did you do this to yourself, then?” he asked, even though he knew Crowley would not be able to answer even if he were so inclined. “Was it you that did all that, to the library and the statues and all?”

“I think if we want to find out,” Anathema said slowly, “we need to get into that library.”

* * *

Getting Anathema through the hallway turned out to be very tricky business. Aziraphale had no idea what magics had gone into creating his amulet and Anathema had never seen anything quite like it, so they stood no chance of replicating it in any sort of short order. Aziraphale could, in some way, sense the presence of magic, but this did very little good in a hallway absolutely chock full of the stuff. Crowley probably could have told them which things were dangerous, but he refused to have anything to do with the entire endeavor, forcing them to split their party and leave Anathema in the kitchen to read whatever Aziraphale guessed _might_ be of use.

“It would be a lot safer if you helped us,” Aziraphale told Crowley one evening. “We’re going to get there whether you like it or not.”

Crowley huffed but didn’t bite him. He’d gotten into the habit lately when he was cranky enough. Aziraphale had decided that the crankier Crowley was, the closer to the truth they had gotten, which was very unfortunate for Aziraphale’s ankles. He was still sporting a bruise on his calf from yesterday morning.

But still… Crowley wasn’t stopping them. At his size, at his _weight_ , he probably could; thirty kilos of enraged bird had, after all, kept the manor free of humans for decades now. Aziraphale would not have wanted to tangle with even a normal sized swan, much less one with a human level of intelligence, if it had been intent on making him stop. As it was, Crowley was just… slowing them down. Making a nuisance of himself, rather than a danger.

“I would think you’d want to be helped,” Aziraphale continued. “I’d want to be a human again, if I were you.”

Crowley regarded him in silence that time, which Aziraphale had generally found to indicate apprehension to agree. Aziraphale thought he might understand, then, and smiled softly as he snuggled down beneath the blankets. Crowley lay slowly and carefully beside him, coiling that great big, snakey neck over Aziraphale’s chest to keep him warm while he slept. Aziraphale gently placed a hand over the back of Crowley’s neck, and stroked his thumb over the soft feathers there.

“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he murmured, half asleep. “I’ll still like you as a person.”

This did not do much to improve the situation; if anything, Crowley seemed even _more_ concerned about them afterward. He would follow Aziraphale down the hall and into the library, hissing his displeasure. He knocked books out of Aziraphale’s hands and attempted to drag them up and over the wall and into the lake. He yanked on trouser legs and bit at Aziraphale’s shoulders and after a week of such nonsense, Aziraphale finally snapped the book he was holding closed and bopped Crowley on the bill with it before he could take another bite.

“That is _it_ , Crowley,” Aziraphale said sharply. “There _must_ be a book here with a spell for talking to animals and you’re going to show it to me this instant. You may not be able to talk about your curse but we are _going_ to have a discussion about your behavior.”

Crowley drew back, bill open, but when Aziraphale didn’t budge an inch, Crowley dipped his head and began to waddle around the destroyed library. He looked over a few of the spell-blackened books and a few bookcases down grabbed at the spine of one of them. It didn’t budge, lodged firmly among the others, and Aziraphale had to come and help separate it without damaging it.

“Thank you,” he said curtly, and cracked it open right there in his hands so he could flip through the pages and check it.

He did not, he told himself very sternly, feel guilty over the way Crowley was looking at him, or about his drooping wings, or his-

“ _Listen_ ,” he said, letting the book droop a little as well, “I don’t _want_ to be sharp with you, my dear fellow, but we are _trying_ to _help_ you, don’t you see? Don’t you want to be a human again?”

Crowley stared back at him, and then leaned his neck forward and touched his bill to the book. He gave a soft hoot, and Aziraphale knew that was the only answer he would get. With a sigh, he looked down at the page he was on, and fell still. He scanned the page, and then scanned it again, not entirely sure what he was seeing.

“Well, it’s _not_ a spell to talk to animals,” he said.

Crowley gave an annoyed honk.

* * *

“This _won’t_ be pleasant,” Anathema warned him the following afternoon. “In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it made you sick.”

“It won’t make me sick,” Aziraphale assured her.

Anathema held up the wooden bowl with crushed flakes of dried weed in it. “This is a poison, Aziraphale,” she said, making sure he was looking her directly in the eyes when she said it. She set it back down a little too forcefully and began pointing to the others. “And that one. And that one. I don’t know what that one does, I’ve never even seen it before.”

“Anathema.” He waited until she let out an irritated huff and gave him time to speak. “Whatever Crowley is trying to do, this is part of it. And I… I’d be dead, if I hadn’t been able to shelter here. If he hadn’t… saved me. So I feel I owe it to him, to try. He wouldn’t hurt me.”

“He is a _swan_ , a _cursed_ swan, in a _cursed_ manor on _cursed land_.” She shook her head, and then dragged a palm over her face, down her mouth. “Alright. You told me you were going to do this, I have helped you this far. I just wanted to make sure you understood the risks. Also when you die, I’m taking all of your stuff.”

“I don’t have any ‘stuff’ to take,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“Then I’ll take all of _his_ stuff,” she said, pointing to Crowley, who just clacked his bill at her and fluffed his wings.

She stared at them a moment longer, and then shook her head and began to combine the ingredients into a tin bowl, dumping them over a chunk of rose quartz Crowley had given them from wherever his stash was in the eastern wing. With a bit of force, she used the quartz to grind them together; rosemary, liverwort, bindweed, and yarrow. Over them, she poured some of the still-steaming water from the kettle, and watched the colors begin to leach into the water.

The spell, as nearly as Aziraphale could tell, was fairly simple. It would render the imbiber of the concoction unconscious, able to share a dream with the closest person who had partaken with them. It wasn’t _quite_ what Aziraphale had had in mind, but Crowley had pulled down a tin full of bloodroot while Aziraphale was showing the spell to Anathema, and she had ruffled all his feathers and called him a brilliant little thing.

She had rapidly explained that if she altered the spell a little, she _might_ be able to give them a loophole. Technically Crowley’s curse forbade him from _speaking_ about his curse, including through gesture or writing, but a dream was not a language, and if she could protect the curse from spreading into their shared dream space, Crowley might be able to show him things he couldn’t say.

She had already whipped up a small protection spell for them, bound it into a paste and drawn the sigils on them both. All that was left was to cast the dreaming spell. Aziraphale’s heart clamored like a bird in a cage as he watched color seep into the mixture. Anathema glanced up once more at him and he gave a little nod. He was ready. She turned her gaze up momentarily, as if asking for assistance from above, and then leaned over the book and began to recite the passage.

It was in no language Aziraphale understood, but as she spoke each word, sparks of color twitched inside of the bowl, and the water began to swirl of its own accord. This was nothing like the first few spells they had cast. Aziraphale could _feel_ the power in this one, and he knew even as she reached the end of the first line that it was going wrong. Without his amulet on, he was _so_ much more sensitive to magic around him, the way he had been at the lake with his mother. He could _see_ it.

“Stop,” he said suddenly, reaching for her but stopping before they touched. “It’s not- it’s not working. It’s not working right.”

“What?” she asked, looking around. The bowl had returned to normal. She didn’t appear to have noticed anything amiss.

“It was- it was _sparking_ ,” he said, uncertain how else to describe it. “Couldn’t you feel it warping?”

Anathema looked at Crowley, but he just stared back. “Warping?”

“Yes,” he said, trying not to sound too irritated. Maybe she couldn’t see it the way he could. Maybe- “I think… I think it needs to be cast by someone with corporeal magic.”

“It’s an artifact spell,” she said, waving a hand at the page. “There’s no instructions at all about needing corporeal magic.”

“But you altered it,” Aziraphale said. “You marked the bowl with the last of the spell you started for us, to link them.”

She looked down at the bowl, at the concoction, brow furrowed as she thought. “But… your spell isn’t corporeal magic, either.”

“It will be,” he said slowly. “It has to be, because you’re linking two spells and two people and interacting with a curse that’s already been cast that probably involved corporeal magic, and you didn’t- there’s no ingredients to cover that exchange.”

“So it’s asking for energy to bridge the gap,” she concluded with him. “No, you’re right. Of course you’re right. Well. I suppose that puts us back to square one, we’ll have to figure out which ingredients we need for doing that.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Aziraphale said. After all, Crowley had been willing to let them go forward with it now. If he thought there was something missing, he would have tried to stop them the way he’d done for most things the last few weeks. “I think… I think I have to be the one to say the words.”

She gave him a skeptical once-over. “But you don’t know how to use your magic yet.”

“I’m not the one using it,” Aziraphale said. That was the trick, he thought even as he realized it. The real difference between corporeal magic and artifact magic. Artifact spells used the magic from within the artifacts presented. Corporeal spells used the magic from within the caster. In either case, the caster wasn’t the one using the magic. The magic used itself. “I’m just the one providing it.”

He saw the light dawn in her eyes, and turned to look at Crowley, who stared evenly back.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he asked. “That’s all corporeal magic is. Humans are the artifact.”

Crowley stared back at him for a long moment, and just as Aziraphale thought he wouldn’t answer, he honked once, softly. Aziraphale nodded, and turned back to face Anathema. Her lips pressed so tightly together they nearly disappeared, but she handed him the book, open to the page they needed, and he settled it into his lap.

This time, as he spoke, there were no sparks. The magic began to stir within the bowl and the leaves that had remained dissolved into the concoction until it was a clear, even brown all over, like very thick tea. The quartz began to dissolve next, or rather the color from it did, draining into the mixture but not blending. It left the liquid streaked with pink. Aziraphale reached in with two fingers and removed the perfectly clear, flawless crystal from inside the bowl. All of the liquid ran off of it, leaving it strangely dry, and he set it aside.

As he pricked his finger and allowed a drop of his blood to fall into the liquid, Crowley crossed close enough to be touched. He laid down and lifted a wing, and Aziraphale drew a drop of blood from the vein under it, the easiest place. He collected it on the tip of the last bit of bloodroot, and used that to stir the mixture, binding all of the elements together. He felt it like a tingle in his limbs, the way the first gulp of liquor hit.

With shaking hands, he lifted the bowl and poured the mixture into a tin cup. Anathema took the bowl from him. She said something, but he couldn’t understand it. He blinked and realized things had already gone a bit wonky and he hadn’t even had a sip of it yet. Her hand on his arm felt like a brand.

He blinked again, and he was sat on his bed, and Crowley was already lying beside him, unmoving. Dead, he thought, but he was warm and breathing. There was a cup in his hands. He tipped it up, and drained the lot of it, and he and the darkness swallowed together.

* * *

Aziraphale woke with a start, fumbling with all of the bedsheets piled high upon him. It was warm, overly so. He was drowning in heat.

“What happened?” he slurred, trying to get his bearings. He looked down to the figure perched on the end of the bed. A young man with fiery-red hair and familiar golden eyes and a smile Aziraphale had wished so many times to see.

“It worked,” Crowley said, gesturing to the room. Their room. “You’re dreaming. Or I suppose _I’m_ dreaming, and you came with me.”

“We’re dreaming?” Aziraphale echoed, as his mind began to clear. He remembered saying a spell. He remembered sitting in bed with Crowley, but he’d been a swan then. “You’re a person.”

“I was always a person,” Crowley said, laughing a little, and Aziraphale melted.

“Oh, but you’re- you’re _you_ ,” he said, smiling through the tight feeling in his chest. “As a human.”

Crowley’s smile faltered a little. “Aziraphale, we don’t have much time. Do you trust me?”

“I should think that answer obvious, all things considered,” Aziraphale told him. “But yes, I do.”

Crowley extended his hands, palms up, and butterflies _swarmed_ in Aziraphale’s belly. They had touched, obviously, but it was hard sometimes to remember that there was a person beneath the feathers. A very real, very handsome and mysterious person who was currently asking Aziraphale to hold his hands.

“Let me show you,” Crowley said, unmoving.

Taking a deep breath, Aziraphale reached forward and slipped his hands over Crowley’s. His hands were warm and soft and pleasant to touch, and Aziraphale even opened his mouth to say so, only to find himself slammed out of this dream, and into a nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some good magic casting! And finally some answers around the corner.


	11. Chapter 10

With a gasp, Aziraphale opened his eyes in the library; at least, a version of it, if not quite the library he had come to know. The walls were the same blue as Aziraphale’s eyes, the shelves a deep, rich brown, and packed full of books so clean they seemed to glow. No battle scars marred the ceiling or floor. Curiously, there was no cage in the far corner, which left Aziraphale to wonder just how long ago this was, how long before everything was destroyed.

He turned at the sound of voices, and saw Crowley enter the library with an older woman. Her long, grey hair lay bound in a mess behind her head, and she had the green eyes of a particularly sharp cat. Aziraphale couldn’t understand the words they were saying, but he could tell they were angry. She pointed, then, at the corner where the cage would be.

“Artifacts gain their magic from the world,” Crowley, the _real_ Crowley, said from beside him, where Aziraphale was sure he hadn’t been just a moment ago. “Just… not _our_ world. This world… it has no magic of its own, but there are places where the material between this world and the next wears thin, and magic leaks through. It collects in artifacts and, as you guessed, in people.”

Aziraphale found he could not look away from what had become a shouting match. “This place is a weak point.” It wasn’t a question- that was the only place this conversation could possibly be going. “What did she want with it?”

“To open a door between the worlds,” Crowley said. “The process of gathering power was too slow for her, the leak too small. She wanted to open a floodgate.”

“What did she want to do with it?” Aziraphale asked, although on some level he knew the answer. Anyone seeking that much power was usually in it for power’s sake. She didn’t look the part, aside from the anger twisting her fine features.

“She was dying,” Crowley said. He almost sounded… sad. “She thought… if she had more power, she could extend her life. She thought she could become a god.”

Aziraphale thought of the statues in the corridor, of the snarling monsters, and the twisted furniture. “So you opened it, and-”

“I didn’t,” Crowley said quickly, almost begging to be believed. “Opening a door like that… Aziraphale, what’s on the other side, none of it cares about anything in this world. And the spell needed to open a stable portal… that sort of magic requires sacrificing life energy. She- Nevermind what would come out of it, she would have wiped out the entire town just opening the door.”

“But the- the monsters in the hall…? The destruction…?” Aziraphale prompted. The pair were standing in the middle of the room now, yelling. “If you didn’t open it, then what are they?”

Crowley didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to; in the next moment the woman snarled and heaved upward with her hands, bringing fire with the motion. The other Crowley twisted a hand and the fire bent around an invisible shield, and Aziraphale could hardly follow the ensuing fight. The only time he had seen corporeal magic used had been the few precious moments where his mother had shown him what she could do. What they both could do.

But that had been tame, compared to this.

Aziraphale could see the magic cast from her fingers as she attacked. Flames licked around them only to be snuffed out by Crowley a moment later. The furniture in the room began to warp and twist, and then to struggle to escape as though alive. Ropes made of blue light snaked through the air, only to drop to the floor as actual snakes. Raw power raked across the ceiling like the claws of a great beast, shattering on an invisible shield. Aziraphale was forced to cover his eyes to block out the blinding light when she blasted the hole in the wall to the outside, sending Crowley with it.

Then she turned to the corner where the cage should have stood, and began to speak. Her eyes fell shut.

“What is she doing?” Aziraphale asked.

“I refused to help her open a door,” the real Crowley said, “and so she tore a hole, counting on me help her stabilize it into a doorway. She really thought that if she cornered me, I would kill all those people.”

Aziraphale watched, fascinated and horrified, as a glowing, ragged rent opened in midair. Through it he could see darkness, and swirling fire, and things which went bump in the night, come to vivid life. They began to claw their way through, the raw, unfiltered magic from their realm spilling over the floor like water. It began to consume whatever lay in its path, or seep into it to warp it beyond recognition. It began to escape the confines of the library just as Crowley pulled himself over the blackened, smoking hole in his library’s wall. Aziraphale’s heart twisted in his chest, even though he could not understand the words, he recognized despair when he heard it.

The other Crowley’s eyes closed, and his Crowley looked down, seemingly unable to watch whatever came next. He swallowed, jaw clenching and unclenching. Before them, the enchantress caught sight of the other Crowley, and Aziraphale saw the moment she realized that her crude mistake would not become a victory. Aziraphale very nearly stepped forward to stop her next spell, but it was only a memory and wouldn’t have done any good.

“She must have realized I was trying to close the opening, instead of stabilize it,” Crowley said. “I suppose she thought I couldn’t close it if I couldn’t speak.”

Magic shot from her hands, racing toward Crowley.

The other Crowley never looked up, never saw it coming: one second he was a man, and the next he was a swan.

The portal slammed closed.

“You closed it,” Aziraphale said, mystified. They must have cast at the exact same moment.

“Not exactly,” Crowley said. “But she thought I did, and she had used what was left of her power to try to stop me. Corporeal magic runs deep in humans, but it does run out, and opening the portal took most of her well. I have to assume she thought she could replenish what she had used, being so close to the tear.”

“So you just… hid it?” Aziraphale asked. “Surely she still felt its presence. It was changing things.”

Crowley watched as the swan before them launched itself at the enchantress, and the dream faded away from them, leaving them once more in an empty library, although this time it looked the way Aziraphale knew it. The illusion of a cage now stood where the portal was, meant to keep people from getting too close to it. He wondered, not for the first time, what had torn the door from the hinges, considering neither truly existed.

“I didn’t hide it,” he admitted, “but I didn’t close it, either. I… picture an open jar. I’ve put my hand over it to stop it spilling out, but… she was right, in a way. I can’t close it.”

“We’ll turn you back, and then you can,” Aziraphale said quickly. “Or I’ll close it myself. Problem solved.”

Crowley’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I wish it were that easy, but she did irreparable damage here, and it’s been too long. The portal is a scar now, and it cannot be healed.”

“Then we’ll mend it some other way,” Aziraphale said. “Once you’re back to being a human, between the three of us we’ll sure be able to find-”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, quite firmly. Aziraphale had never hated to hear his name so much as he did now. “My curse can’t be broken. She made sure of that.”

“Every curse can be broken, somehow,” Aziraphale said softly.

Crowley let out a low huff of laughter. “I suppose you’re right,” he conceded. “My true love’s kiss could break this one, were I able to love another that way. But she knew what it would mean...” He shook his head, looked away. “She meant to be so cruel, at any rate. She was angry. Afraid.”

“Anathema says we can turn you into a human, instead of breaking the spell,” Aziraphale said, but even he could hear how weak of an offering that was. Crowley had heard her say so before. He already knew.

“It would kill me,” Crowley said. “I’ve been this way a century now. Any human form would be just as old. I would surely die.”

“How?” Aziraphale breathed. “How can you still live, as a swan? They are shorter-lived than humans.”

Crowley’s smile looked more than a little ill and he had to swallow a couple of times before he could spit out any words. “I chased her from the grounds, but she came back a few months later. She was… on death’s doorstep, and she was _furious_ with me. She used her dying breath to ensure I got what I wouldn’t give to her. My life maintains by stealing the life of any living thing within a mile of me at the deepest part of the night.”

“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale said, almost automatically, but he meant it to the very core of himself. He could not imagine the horror of being stuck in Crowley’s position. If he died, the portal would spew unspeakable terrors into this world, and if he lived, it was only at the expense of others. That was no kind of life. “Do you-” He swallowed. “Do you want to stop?”

“Does it matter?” Crowley said. “A few people lose their lives here or there, if they’re stupid enough to stay overnight despite the warnings, but that’s nothing compared to the lives that would be lost if...” He gestured vaguely toward where the portal had stood, jagged and bleeding magic.

“It matters to me,” Aziraphale said, as gently as he knew how. He wasn’t sure how well his next words would go over, but he knew he had to offer each and every one of them. “I know I’ve only been here a couple of months, but I care what happens to you. I care _about_ you, and I don’t want you to suffer. So if you… I can find another way to close it. I’ll hold it closed myself if I have to. You deserve rest if you want it, Crowley.”

Crowley reached to touch him then, but the hand he laid on Aziraphale’s shoulder sparked no sensation in the dream. “I don’t. I wanted it to stop, when I was alone with the loss her curse caused. But… it’s different with you around.”

“And Anathema?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley smiled, genuinely this time. “She still has to leave at night.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, recalling the vague memory of a desolate wail echoing around the manor in the night. It had stopped, once he started sleeping there. His brows came together as a few other things clicked into place. “Is that why you’ve been such a nuisance? Crowley, I won’t leave if you don’t want me to, whether we break your curses or not. Surely you must… I’m sure I...”

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t asked if he could live at the manor beyond the solving of the mystery, beyond the breaking of the curse. He had asked to stay here, but not to _stay_ here. He had just assumed that, given the space, and the shows of companionship, and the fact that he had nowhere else to go, that Crowley expected all of this to continue. Perhaps Aziraphale had assumed too much.

“You won't go?” Crowley asked hesitantly. “Even after-” he gestured around the library, to the destruction around them “-all that?”

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, relaxing a little. He’d been right. Crowley wanted him here, and had obviously – and mistakenly – thought Aziraphale wouldn’t want to stay if they solved the problem. “I told you, we’re friends. I was willing to risk death to remain here with you before and now I’m sitting here in a dream after drinking what was quite frankly the worst tea I’ve ever had. I’ve been learning magic and planting a garden and clearing your orchard. I should think it obvious that I want to be here. To _stay_ here. That is… if I may be allowed?”

“You can stay,” Crowley said, staring at Aziraphale now as if he’d seen a unicorn. Or perhaps something a lot more mundane, given his apparent predilection to encountering the strange. “If you like.”

“Then I shall,” Aziraphale said with the air of a decision being finalized. “And we will find some other way to get you back, or I’ll stay until it’s my time, and we can go to rest together. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Crowley said warmly. He stared at Aziraphale a moment longer, all the fondness in the world writ upon his face. Then the dream began to fall apart around them, and darkness swept in behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depending on their lengths, I miiiight end up just combining the next 2 chapters into 1. The final chapter is already written, so this may actually wrap up very soonly now that they have a much better idea of what is going on around here!


	12. Chapter 11

Aziraphale struggled awake, eyes sticky and mouth dry. Sunlight shafted through the dust in the air, creating soft beams that were much too far along the floor for it to be an appropriate time to wake. At his side, Crowley stirred as well and looked muzzily around. It was a shame, Aziraphale thought, that they hadn’t had the pleasure of a night of drinking good spirits to go with such a hangover.

“Good morning,” he croaked, throat rasping. He closed his eyes again for a moment, and then began to wriggle himself upright against the headboard. “I suppose I’d best get somewhere I can write down our dream. Wouldn’t do to forget it, after all the trouble.”

Crowley grumbled, and made to slide off the edge of the bed like he did every morning, but Aziraphale put out a hand to stop him. He looked over, head tipping a little in question, and Aziraphale managed a fleeting smile.

“My dear,” he said slowly, “I wonder if you wouldn’t humor me just a moment? I know that you said it wouldn’t work, but ought we to make sure before we go through the rest of the trouble of breaking your spell?”

For a moment it was clear Crowley had no idea what he was talking about, and then he drew back, stiffening up a little. Aziraphale very nearly rushed to apologize, but before he could utter a word, Crowley’s long neck bent in a graceful arc, his head stopping a few inches from Aziraphale’s. It was very clear permission to try, and so Aziraphale leaned to close the gap, and pressed a kiss to the top of Crowley’s head, then one to the top of his bill for good measure.

As Crowley had predicted, nothing happened. “Ah, well,” Aziraphale said with a smile. “Better to have tested it than missed it. Breakfast?”

Crowley snorted and slid backward off the bed, landing very ungracefully before righting himself. Aziraphale dressed quickly and pulled the covers into a sloppy sort of neat order, and donned his boots at the door. Aziraphale hoped that Anathema had made it home alright; she had stayed a little later than usual, but now that Aziraphale knew the parameters of the curse, it had been nowhere near a dangerous hour.

He heard the murmur of voices and the sizzle of cooking meat long before they reached the kitchen. He poked his head around the corner, Crowley not bothering with discretion ahead of him, and Newt caught sight of him first. He smiled broadly and waved the knife in his hand in greeting, which might have been threatening from almost anyone else in the world. As it was, Aziraphale nearly told Newt to put it down before he hurt himself.

“The intrepid explorers return to the land of the living!” he said with a grin. “Anathema, look.”

“I see them,” Anathema said, from where she was watching the coals of a fire in the hearth. There was bread toasting and what looked like oats soaking in a bowl and Aziraphale could smell the sausages even if he couldn’t see them. Newt was cutting up some kind of fruit beside the wash basin. “Welcome back.”

“Were we really dead?” Aziraphale asked, stopping beside one of the chairs at the small table. They had long-since combined the kitchen with the dining room, to prevent themselves from having to keep two rooms clean.

“You certainly looked it last night,” Anathema told him. “I’m surprised you made it to your bed before you dropped. Crowley didn’t. I dragged him there, all while trying to keep you from walking into walls. We could have thought that through better.”

“Yes, well. Next time I’ll be sure to take my dream-walking potion from bed,” Aziraphale said. He stretched up a little bit, looking at their work. “Is there anything I might do to help?”

“We didn’t expect you to be up,” Newt admitted. “You could grab an extra place setting for yourself if you’re hungry.”

“You could tell us what happened,” Anathema added. “I’m dying to know. I barely slept last night worrying about you. Both of you.”

Aziraphale smiled and stepped over to the cupboard to fetch himself a plate and a cup and a spoon. “Then you’ll be happy to know it worked,” he said as he went. She opened her mouth to ask for more, but Aziraphale pressed onward quickly with: “ _Both_ parts. We got to share a dream, and he was able to tell me about the curse there. Or rather, _both_ curses, _and_ the demonic portal in the library.”

Anathema gave a squawk of disbelief, and Aziraphale laughed, knowing he would have quite the captive audience over breakfast.

* * *

Anathema let her book thump down on the table, and Aziraphale looked over in time to see her run a hand through her loose hair. He could practically feel the frustration rolling off of her in waves. It had been two weeks since he’d first stepped into a dream with Crowley, and it continued to feel as if they were not any closer. Crowley was of little use back in his swan body, subject to the rules of a curse that prevented him from showing them where anything useful might be.

Although they had found a dozen other very useful spells amidst the books in the library, almost none of them related to curses at all, and the ones that _did_ only contained them as a part of a larger volume of knowledge. This was not, strictly speaking, much of a surprise. Crowley hadn’t been the one throwing around curses.

“We could stop for lunch,” Aziraphale suggested sympathetically. On the other side of the study, Newt picked his head up at the mention of food. Crowley had gone out a while ago to do some swimming and eat some weeds or whatever it was swans did all day when left to their own devices, but he would certainly join them if they were pausing the boring part of magical research.

Anathema glared at the tome before her as though it had personally offended her before she shook her head. “I’m nearly through this one,” she told him, “but it’s just… every time I think there might be something we could use, it won’t solve the whole picture.”

Aziraphale forced a smile he knew didn’t look sincere. “It does seem rather like we’ll have to make a choice… save the man or save the world.”

She nodded and kept her eyes carefully trained on the book instead of meeting his gaze. “And you know which one he’d choose.”

It wasn’t a question, so Aziraphale didn’t answer. Of course he knew. It was a choice any decent, reasonable sort of person would make. It was the choice Aziraphale would make, if it were given to him, if for no other reason than because he was one of the people living in the world. It made no sense to save someone from a curse if they would just die anyway.

“If it comes down to a choice, we’ll mend the tear,” Aziraphale said.

With a sigh, Anathema threaded her hands into her hair and let them rest there. Her eyes slid closed. “Are you really alright with losing him?”

“No,” Aziraphale said honestly. “But what choice do I have? I won’t insist he live by causing death, or that he pay for the mistakes of another for eternity. It seems the least we can do, to give him peace from that if we cannot save him.”

“Shame we can’t just make another amulet and put it on the portal,” Newt joked from the far side of the table. When both Anathema and Aziraphale just stared at him, he shrank a little. “Or not?”

Anathema turned her attention back to Aziraphale, eyes ticking as she thought. Aziraphale shook his head. “ _You_ said we can’t duplicate it,” he reminded her. “And that this one won’t work for anyone else.”

“I _did_ say that,” she agreed, “and it _i_ _s_ true. But I _might_ have an idea.”

* * *

Shortly after her little revelation, she had insisted on being taken to the library in person, and she had demanded Crowley show her which books were about artifact magic, and which were about corporeal magic, and which had both. Without telling him why she wanted them, she asked him which corporeal and mixed magic books had spells about protection, and ended up with a couple of dozen books instead of a couple of hundred to go through. Admittedly that was a handy way around the curses, if only because Crowley had no idea what was happening.

A few days later, Anathema set a book down on top of the one Aziraphale was flipping through. She had left it open to a marked page, and he skimmed down the length of it, and onto the next three pages. She didn’t say a word the entire time, but she didn’t have to; even though she hadn’t explained her plan to him, he saw it now.

He touched fingers to the amulet around his neck. “Will it work?”

“How should I know?” she said. “It’d need some alteration, but it may be the best shot we’re going to get, to… well. _Not_ kill two birds with one stone.”

For another few long seconds, Aziraphale stared down at the page. He knew what she was asking, and more importantly what she _wouldn’t_ ask. He let out a heart-heavy sigh. “Alright,” he said. “What do we need to alter?”

“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “But… I need to know that you’re sure, before I try to find out.”

“I’m sure,” Aziraphale said, with as much confidence as he could muster.

She stared at him for a few tense heartbeats, and then collected the book and thumped it closed. Only a step away, she hesitated. “Are you going to tell Crowley?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “We both know what he’d say. Are you…?”

“I’m not going to tell him,” she said slowly, disapproval scrawled in her expression, “but you should.”

“He told me what he wants. It’s my turn.”

“Alright,” she said, even though it was clearly not alright. “Then, we should start on this absolutely ridiculous list, and… we still need to find the original spells. I can’t do this if I don’t have those.”

“ _You_ can’t do this at all,” he said with a small smile.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, _you_ can’t do this without those. Or me.”

He chuckled. “We’ll find them,” he assured her. “Now that we know what to look for, we’ll find them.”

Her smiled turned a little sad around the edges. “I don’t know whether to hope so, or not.”

“Both,” Aziraphale said. “A little bit of both, I think.”

* * *

Aziraphale sat in the library, his back against one of the bookshelves and his knees drawn partway up. To his left sat the cage full of books that didn’t really exist, and if he looked just right at it, he found he could see the scarred, thobbing wound in the world. It didn’t look how he had imagined. He had seen Crowley’s memory of it being torn. He remembered the ragged edges of the magic, the way it felt like the world was bleeding, or at least _someone’s_ world was bleeding, spilling magic onto the floor in a spreading pool.

What was left did not look like a wound anymore. Aziraphale could still see the shimmer of magic that leaked from within it, but it looked more like a curl of steam from a lake at morning. The edges had knitted and smoothed but the sides had not come together completely. Between one side and the other lay a sliver of mirror-smooth magic the color of the lake on a full moon night.

No part of him should want to touch that glassy surface, but he did. He’d been sitting here an hour now just not-quite-staring at it, wondering what would happen if he did it. Would it tingle, as touching the door had done? Would it hurt? Would the amulet be able to absorb that much magic? Or would he be dead before he even realized it?

Some small part of him whispered that none of that would come to pass. He had seen what the open portal looked like. He had seen the other realm through it, seen the creatures and the flame-shaped magic licking at every surface. He had _seen_ it, and so the fact that he could _not_ see it meant that the darkness he saw now was not a part of the portal.

It was Crowley’s magic, capped over the top of it, holding it shut.

And were Aziraphale to press a hand to _that_ , he had no doubt that Crowley’s would not hurt him. But his amulet… if his amulet could overpower Crowley’s magic, if it could absorb that cap, then it would. All the magic that had begun to spill into their world would do so again. He would start another cataclysmic event.

So, he sat.

He sat with his back to a bookshelf and didn’t quite look at the portal and fiddled with the pages of a book he was not reading until he heard a soft, questioning hoot from the doorway. With great effort, he tore his gaze away from the portal and smiled faintly at Crowley.

“I had to see it,” he said into the quiet of the night. Anathema and Newt had long-since left for home, and Crowley had probably been waiting for him to come to bed after walking them out. “While awake, I mean.”

Crowley stood in the doorway for almost too long, and then lowered his head a little and waddled heavily over to Aziraphale’s side. With a soft huff, he plopped down beside Aziraphale and didn’t quite look at the portal either. Aziraphale wondered what Crowley could see of the portal. If he could see his own magic, and if it was as opaque as it was to Aziraphale, or transparent so he could see through to the other side.

“It’s such a small thing,” Aziraphale said, voice hushed even though there was no one to keep the secret from. “I feel like I should be able to close it like a curtain over a window. And yet, I can feel its power from here. I’m certain it could obliterate me without noticing.”

Crowley gave a tiny honk of agreement.

A smile twitched at the corner of Aziraphale’s lips, gone before it had a chance to take root. He had been thinking a lot about power. When it was under control it was useful, the way fire was useful. A little bit was like a candle, lighting a room. More than that might fill a hearth to warm the house or cook the food. But he had seen wildfires ravage a forest before. He had heard of huge swathes of land being consumed by this thing they kept so harmlessly in their homes.

A little bit of magic could light a candle or a lock a chest or protect a person.

A lot of magic could destroy one.

The sort of magic they were going to play with could destroy a world.

And the only thing stopping it from doing so was the will of a swan, who used to be a man.

“Is it difficult?” Aziraphale asked into the silence. He glanced sidelong at Crowley. “Holding it shut, I mean.”

Crowley looked not-quite-at the portal, obviously considering. Then he gave one soft noise of assent. It was not that Aziraphale hadn’t expected the answer, but his heart gave a good, hard twist anyway. He couldn’t imagine, nor could he imagine shouldering such a burden alone for so long.

“Anathema thinks she’s found a- a spell,” Aziraphale said. _Solution_ would be disingenuous. “She doesn’t know if it will work, if she tampers with it. I don’t know, either, and it’s not like we can ask you. But, I think it will.”

Reaching over, Crowley tugged gently on his shirt with a soft noise, a question. _What’s the deal_ , Aziraphale could practically hear him asking, now that he knew what Crowley’s voice sounded like. He tried to unwire his jaw, to tell Crowley what the plan was, but in he end, he only sighed.

“She says I should talk to you about it,” he said, definitely avoiding looking at his companion now. “But I don’t want to. I’m afraid you’ll tell me no.” That did not, he knew, make it sound any better, so he added: “It won’t hurt me, or her, or you, if that matters, but...”

Gently, Crowley flapped one wing out and let it splay open over Aziraphale’s knee. Aziraphale dragged his gaze up to meet Crowley’s golden one, and Crowley shook his head a little. He was letting Aziraphale off the hook.

“It will let me stay here safely,” he mumbled. “The spell. It will let me stay here safely as long as I want. And I… I do want that. I want to do this. Is that enough, do you think?”

Crowley’s head came down to rest upon his wing, a silent sort of acceptance, and Aziraphale shifted to stroke over it with one hand. It looked as if he wouldn’t have to explain himself further; much to his relief, Crowley seemed willing to allow what would come, knowing it was what Aziraphale wanted. He trusted him. It was for the best, Aziraphale told himself, over the top of the little voice that told him it really wasn’t. Crowley had enough guilt in his life already, there was no way Aziraphale was going to add to it now, not when that would give Crowley a chance to think he could have stopped it. He couldn’t. Even if he could, Aziraphale didn’t _want_ him to.

He just wanted to stay like this, in peace and quiet, with Crowley beside him, however impossible a request that seemed.

But whatever tomorrow would bring, they had this moment, and they would have the next, and at least a handful after that, and Aziraphale intended to savor every one. So, he leaned his head back against the bookshelf and stared up at the scarred paintings on the ceiling, and let the silky feathers of Crowley’s neck pass beneath his hand until he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking bets on what his ridiculous plan is!


	13. Chapter 12

It took several more weeks of paging through books and wandering about on the grounds to get the ingredients in order. Crowley helped in the library by pulling down and removing books that were _not_ the books they needed, until the number of books they had to search grew small enough that they had found one of the three original spells and part of another. There was one for animal transmogrification and one for closing small tears that Anathema believed she could modify, but despite having searched every book Crowley left them, Aziraphale found no trace of one to transfer life energy from one vessel to another.

“You would think if she wanted to live longer,” he said as they sat on the landing at the bottom of the stairs by the lake for lunch, “that she might have just used the spell she put on you if she already knew it.”

Crowley snorted, and reached for one of the peas Aziraphale had thrown into the water for him. Aziraphale was certain Crowley was just as miffed about the idea, and he’d had much longer to think about it.

“I suppose she must have wanted company,” Aziraphale said. “Can’t have that if everyone around you just dies. She really was awful to you.”

From behind, Aziraphale heard his name being called, and he twisted in time to see Anathema lean out the window of his bedroom. “I thought you said- nevermind, meet me in the library. And leave the goose!”

Crowley gave a loud, indignant squeak-honk at that, but Aziraphale tutted at him and put the bowl of peas by the edge of the water. Before Aziraphale had even finished pulling his feet out of the water, Crowley had grabbed the bowl by the lip and begun banging it on the step in protest, slopping peas everywhere.

“I’m not getting you another bowl,” Aziraphale told him as he picked up his shoes. The sound of angry pea-eating followed him back to the manor.

Anathema met him in the hall outside of the library. They had marked a safe pathway in and out so that she could have a look at the portal personally, and it was there they traveled now. She drew to a stop off to the side of it, where they could get a look at it if they turned their heads just right. It looked different in the daytime. Less like a dark mirror and more like a shallow pool of light.

“Alright,” she said, holding up her hands as if to stop something. “I’ve figured out how to do most of what we want, but there’s a problem. Even with the cap, this thing is putting out _so much_ magic that it will exceed the capacity of any reasonable collection spell’s capacity. In short, it’s like trying to pour a lake into a cup.”

“I’m not sure I… where’s it going currently?” Aziraphale asked. Surely if there were so much of it, they would see the effect.

“Everywhere,” she said, gesturing all around them. “It’s just seeping into things. The ground, the water, the plants. If there were animals I bet it’d be collecting in them, too. You. At this point, maybe even me, maybe even Newt.”

“And we have to stop that,” Aziraphale concluded, though it came out sounding more like a question.

“It’s not a matter of have to, it’s a matter of _will_. Crowley’s cork is leaky, like trying to cup water in your hands. When the new spells take effect, it’ll be an all-or-nothing redirection,” she told him. “That magic _will_ collect only where we tell it, and it _will_ be too much.”

Aziraphale looked askance at the portal, thinking. Maybe they could at least buy enough time for a different solution. “How quickly will it overflow?”

She shook her head, eyes ticking up as she thought, perhaps calculating. “I don’t know. If your magic has been draining into that amulet for your entire life, it’s probably got a deep well. But what’s the difference in power between you and the portal? Is it twice as strong? Five times? A hundred?” She sighed. “I don’t have any way to tell.”

“I do,” he said, realization dawning. “I could tell.” He had only thought of the scenario a thousand times since the first. He’d wanted to put hands on the portal for weeks now. “Here, hold this.” He removed his amulet, and placed it in her hands as she held them up in automatic surprise.

“Aziraphale, what- hey!” she said as he moved past her toward the portal with determination.. “What are you doing! Aziraphale!”

“It’s fine!” he told her, picking his way carefully over the debris where she dared not follow. “I can do this!”

Without the amulet, he could feel the resonance of his own magic beneath his skin, hungry for release the closer he got. It reached for the magic of the portal before him, clamoring for a connection as if it could sense what Aziraphale was about to do. His skin prickled in anticipation as well, heart thrumming even though he believed, in every way, that Crowley’s magic would keep him safe enough to do this. It would work.

Past the gateway of the cage, the illusion failed, revealing the portal the way Aziraphale had first seen it: clearly visible, shimmering and ethereal. He stared at it, taking in the scarred edges and the cap of magic and the faint traces of magic that leaked from within. He swallowed. This had seemed like a much better idea from the other side of the door. But he had told Anathema he could do this, and he was pretty sure he could, and so before he could think too much more about it, he reached both hands forward and laid them on the portal.

Distantly, he could hear the panicked screaming of a swan as he felt the magic of the portal press up against the cap Crowley had placed on it. He left his hands there only for a second, but one that stretched out eternal to either side of him. His magic reached out past his fingertips like the unfurling of wings, and the moment it connected with the other side carried the comfort of a ship finally coming home to harbor.

Where his hands met the portal a connection forged to what lay beyond and an entire world opened up before him, ancient and eldritch and _sentient_. He could feel it watching him the way a lion watches an ant, with only a passing interest for something so insignificant. Even so, it recognized him. It recognized the part of itself within him, and it called to his magic, and his magic called back and the echo of it reverberated in every piece of stone, every plant, every tome, every _everything_ that had ever soaked up magic from the Origin. It created a song unlike anything Aziraphale had ever heard, one that reached the deepest parts of himself.

In that instant, he knew the measure of the portal’s magic without asking. He understood the scale of difference between the drop of it held in his mortal body and the ocean it had come from, and how the two would seek to even out the way the other world had been doing since the first thin spot between them had formed. Anathema was correct. When they uncapped the portal, magic would pour forth, and it would certainly be too much.

But in that same instant, before he broke the connection, he saw precisely how to fix it.

He reeled backward, still panting, heart hammering and blood ringing in his ears. He couldn’t feel his hands, though he could still see them, the pads of them smoking and red when he turned them over to look. A muffled sound muddled through and he turned to look at Anathema. He could see her mouth moving, and knew that she was making noises, but he couldn’t tell which ones.

It didn’t matter.

He had a book to find.

He stumbled across the library, heedless of the danger of doing so without his amulet, until he reached the shelf closest to the blasted hole in the wall. The muscles in his hands refused to obey him properly, and so he just scrabbled at the spines of books, spilling them onto the floor until he found the one he wanted. It should have been destroyed. It should never have existed. He clutched at it with shaking hands and turned to look at Anathema again.

“I know what to do,” he said, only it came out more like “aitadoo” right before his knees gave out and unconsciousness came knocking.

* * *

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Aziraphale heard, before he knew he was awake. He made a noise somewhere between a groan and a growl and struggled to put a hand to his bandaged head. Everything throbbed the way a thumb did when struck with a hammer.

“Am I dead?” he croaked.

“No, you’re just an idiot.” Anathema, then. His ears were still ringing vaguely. “What were you _thinking_?”

“I suppose I wasn’t,” Aziraphale said.

“You could have died.” She sounded quite angry. Aziraphale wasn’t sure he could blame her; he hadn’t exactly explained himself before going in, but he had _known_ it would be alright.

“I couldn’t have,” he said. “Crowley’s magic was between me and… well, all of it.” Which was, he thought, only partially true, but it _was_ true.

“And you didn’t think about how that would affect _him_?” she asked mildly. “He’s fine, by the way. Passed out just like you did, though. Thankfully he’d come off the water by the time he did.”

Aziraphale’s belly sank at that. He hadn’t thought at all that it might affect Crowley, but he should have. Crowley’s magic was a part of him just the same as Aziraphale’s was, he understood that now. “I didn’t mean to make you worry,” he said quietly, prying open his eyes to look at her. His eyes were sore and crusty as if he’d been crying. “Or hurt him.”

“I know,” she said tiredly, shoulders dropping. “Tell me it was at least worth it. You grabbed this off a shelf right before you passed out, any idea why?”

He sat up a little, aching all over, and accepted the tome she placed into his lap. Surprisingly, his hands were not bandaged or damaged. He could have sworn he’d seen them burned, but they only felt the way the rest of him did, fragile and new and oddly sensitive. The paper under his fingers felt overly coarse and textured.

“I do,” he said, flipping through the pages to get to the right spell. “We’ve been looking for how to mend the tear.”

The edge of the bed dipped as she sat on it. “I looked through that whole thing while you were out. There’s nothing about _closing_ it.”

“Right,” he agreed as he found the page. He felt dizzy skimming it over, knowing what he was going to do.

“Aziraphale…” she said, catching sight of the page he’d stopped on.

“Have you ever mended a torn piece of cloth?” he asked, and pressed on before she even answered. “I didn’t have much cause to, when I was little. My parents would replace the clothing we damaged. But for a time, after I had moved away, I had cause to get repairs done. There are dozens of ways to fix a garment. Sometimes a hole can be stitched closed, like a flesh wound. But sometimes you have to cut the whole thing out, and make something new. I had a pair of trousers once, and my tailor cut off the entire-”

“Aziraphale!” she exclaimed before he could get any further. “You’re talking about something _you_ said would kill my entire town.”

“And it would have!” Aziraphale said. “It would have because there wasn’t enough energy in the area to open a door from scratch before. But _you_ said that energy has been leaking out of that portal for a hundred years. This whole area must certainly be saturated, and that tear is just bursting with magic.”

She stared at him and then her gaze dropped, eyes ticking back and forth as she obviously raced through the same patterns of thought he had after touching the portal. She shook her head. “That doesn’t- it wouldn’t...”

“I know,” he said. “It’s still a choice between him and… but it’s a safer one than anything else we’ve found, and it would be a sure bet instead of a chance taken.”

Slowly, she dragged a hand over her mouth, and then gave a small dismissive gesture of surrender. “Alright,” she conceded. “But you _have_ to tell him this time. We can’t risk messing it up.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Where is he?”

She pressed a hand to his chest to stop him as he tried to sit up and get out of bed. “Nu-uh,” she said, taking the book away from him. “He woke up about an hour ago and he’s been looking at the portal ever since. I made more dreamwalker elixir because I thought we were going to have to go in and get you both. But I think it’d be better spent if you used it to talk to him.”

Aziraphale laid back against the headboard once more. “I suppose you’re right,” he admitted with reluctance. “I owe him a proper apology if nothing else.”

“I’ll go get him,” she told him softly, standing up with the book clutched in her hands. Aziraphale watched her go, and then settled in to wait.

* * *

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Aziraphale said when Crowley appeared in the doorway of the library. He might not have noticed the silent arrival, except the ruins of the room cleaned, the soot disappearing, the books putting themselves in order, the hole in the wall mending. Crowley’s imagination was much stronger than Aziraphale’s.

“ _What_ were you _thinking?_ ” Crowley practically hissed, echoing Anathema, though it sounded _much_ more like concern than anger coming from him.

Aziraphale winced. “Anathema wanted to know how powerful the tear was, and I… I thought I could tell, if I touched it. You know, like how you touch a spell and can see how it’s put together? And I thought _your_ magic would-”

“Like _what_?” Crowley interrupted. “You can map a spell?”

Mouth clacking shut, Aziraphale blinked. “I wouldn’t… call it _mapping_ exactly, but… I _can_ tell which parts do what, can’t you?”

“No!” Crowley’s laugh was only a little hysterical. “No, I cannot, Aziraphale, and I’ve never met a mage who can.” He ran a hand through his burnished-red locks, ruffling them. “I mean, I’ve heard of it. Is that what this is about? You mapped something when you touch the tear?”

“Sort of,” Aziraphale said, swallowing now that he had reached the part where he was going to have to admit to Crowley that he wanted to make things a _lot_ worse before he tried to make them better. _If_ he could make them better. “I think I’ve found a way to mend the tear completely.”

Crowley’s brow furrowed. “Really?” His gaze slipped sideways, past Aziraphale to where the tear would be if they were really in the library. It was only an empty corner now, in the Library-Before of Crowley’s mind. “How?”

“I’m going to open a door instead,” Aziraphale said carefully. “In the exact same place.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, in the same tone as Anathema had. “That’s like setting the house on fire so you haven’t got to clean it. That’s not a solution.”

“I actually think it is,” Aziraphale said. “The reason the tear is dangerous is because it cannot be closed, but a doorway, a proper one, could be. Closed _and_ locked.”

“And the townsfolk?” Crowley asked incredulously, as if he could not believe Aziraphale had forgotten such a large and important detail. As if he thought Aziraphale was suggesting they kill them all. “The whole reason I didn’t want her opening a door in the first place?”

Aziraphale grimaced. This was the part he couldn’t be sure about, and the main reason he needed to speak to Crowley and have Crowley answer back. Surely a hundred years of leaking magic would have suffused this place with enough magic to open a door… but he didn’t actually know how much magic it would require, or if magic that was not life energy could be used. He strongly suspected it could, given the reaction of Crowley’s spell to his amulet, but… he needed to be sure before he risked it.

“Well, _that’s_ why we’re here,” he said. “I found a spell that can open a doorway, but it doesn’t specify what sort of magic can be used. Your enchantress, she meant to use the life energy of the townsfolk, but will stored energy work as well? Say… a hundred years’ worth, saturated into the grounds and stonework of a manor sitting on a leaky portal to magic’s origin world?”

Crowley blinked. “What?” he said faintly. Aziraphale was treated to seeing the suggestion catch fire in Crowley’s golden eyes. “W- you- that’s...”

“The way I see it,” Aziraphale added, “the tear itself emits quite a lot of magic as well, and it will exist until the exact moment to the doorway takes its place. Were you to ah… take your hand off the jar, so to speak, I think between the two there’s more than enough magic that no one will be hurt.”

“It would consume everything,” Crowley said, but it no longer sounded like an argument. “All of the magic in the area.”

“W-yes, I-I had thought of that,” Aziraphale admitted. “But might _everything_ include… what was done to _you_?”

Crowley’s gaze unfocused a little as he considered that particular implication. “It… maybe. And that’s a _big_ maybe, Aziraphale.”

“If it turned you back into a human, would you still age?” Aziraphale asked. “Since the spell wouldn’t be _broken_ it would be _consumed_?”

Crowley thought about it for a few long, tense moments, and then finally shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe?”

“I’m not sure I can risk you for a _maybe_ ,” Aziraphale said softly.

“I think you may have to,” he said, softening as well. “If you can close the tear- or- or the door, after making it, if you can keep that thing from ending the world… you have to try.”

Aziraphale dropped his gaze, chest tight. “I know,” he conceded, “but I don’t have to like it.”

“Who knows? Maybe it will go the right way,” Crowley suggested, forcing a smile. “It’s about time something did, isn’t it?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Aziraphale said, trying to force himself to cheer up for Crowley’s sake. “Would you mind very much, going over the details before we have to wake up again?”

“Here?” Crowley asked, looking around. “Aziraphale, most of these books will just be blank inside. I haven’t memorized them all.”

“We only need one, and I know what it says.” He crossed the space over to the correct bookshelf, and pulled it free. It was the same one Anathema had handed to him in the waking world. He’d had such a clear image of it after touching the portal, almost as if it had wanted him to find it. “This one, in fact.

Looking a little taken aback, Crowley gestured to a nearby table. “Where do we begin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have overestimated my ability to fit the ending into this chapter, so I guess there's an extra chapter being added lol Who is ready for some MAGIC and some MISTAKES and an ENDING it has to end soon right


	14. Chapter 13

Aziraphale stood in the library, watching the glossy shimmer of Crowley’s magic as it wavered around the tear. He had spent the two days prior clearing space on the floor, moving things to the side. Anathema had helped him relocate books, so that they would not suffer damage again, and the shelves all around him now stood empty. Given the uncertainty of the outcome, Aziraphale had sent her home with instructions to not return until the next evening. She had hugged him fiercely and kissed the top of Crowley’s head, and walked away with Newt’s hand in hers.

Aziraphale did dearly hope it would not be the last time they would ever meet.

With her gone and no threat of someone finding them out before they had finished, Crowley had let the illusion fall away to reveal the tear. It was strange, to feel no difference in the air, and to realize that the hum of power all around them had been there the entire time, if only Aziraphale had known to look for it. It was stranger, still, to try to imagine what the manor would feel like without it. What had called to him, that very first night, he knew now to be the magic that had connected to his own. When it was gone, he had no idea how he would feel about the place.

How much of what he felt did not belong to him?

“Are you ready?” he asked, voice thin. It sounded different in here without the books to muffle the sound.

Crowley made a soft hoot of assent, and took a few waddling steps forward. He still had to remove the cover from the tear, to give them access to the power, and then remove himself from the middle of the spell, but Aziraphale would not have long after that to act. Without Crowley’s magic, the same cataclysmic warping would begin in the library and only spread from there.

He blew out a breath and Crowley twisted his long neck around to look. Aziraphale forced a wan smile. They had already said goodbye, in case they did not get a chance to now, but the moment felt like it deserved some kind of acknowledgment. “I’ll see you on the other side of the spell. It’s going to work.”

Crowley dipped his head a little in agreement, but he did let his gaze linger upon Aziraphale, as if taking him in just a little longer. Aziraphale found himself relieved he was not the only nervous one here. He wrapped his fingers around his amulet, rubbing a thumb over the back of it as he watched Crowley stand tall, rising to his full, enormous height, with his wings spread, reminding Aziraphale starkly of the night they had met, when Aziraphale had thought him some kind of monstrous beast.

Dragging his attention back to the moment, Aziraphale steeled himself for the spell. He held his breath as the cap of Crowley’s magic over the tear shivered with his command, changing from a deep midnight to an angry red to a silvery color right before it dissipated like smoke.

The flood of power into the space hit Aziraphale like a punch to the gut, very nearly winding him. Seeing it in the dream with no sensation to accompany it had not prepared him in the least for how it buzzed over his skin and twanged into his muscles and bones. The lightning-strike ache from touching the covered portal had nothing on the bone-deep wrench of power spilling freely out now.

But he knew, as it sang to the magic within him, that it had no intention of damaging him. It was connecting, and he tried to relax, to let it flow through him as a river flows through its bed. It filled him up, eroding him a little as it went, and spilled into the amulet until that overflowed as well. Their previous plan to lock the tear with the amulet seemed laughable now; Aziraphale could hardly fathom how Crowley had held it closed for so many decades alone.

Crowley swiveled his head to look at Aziraphale, and Aziraphale gave a slight nod as the room around them began to warp at the edges. It was now or never.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and reached into the well of power within himself, collecting up the connection to the magic all around him like gathering strings to braid. They writhed against his control, but he held firm until he had so many that one more would mean dropping them all, and then he did as Crowley had instructed him to do; he blanketed his will over them, pressing his desire into the command, and felt when the magic responded eagerly to have a task.

 _Open_ , he thought, with every part of himself.

Around the tear, a perfect halo of light appeared, bright white and crackling but not a doorway. For one heart-stopping second, Aziraphale wondered if he had done something wrong, and then he felt it. Where the tear had been open and pouring magic into the world, the frame of the door had begun to forge and it was sucking in energy to do so.

It paused when it got to him and he felt the _recognition_ in the power, the same sort as he had felt touching the cap on the tear, and then it passed him by. He was the caster of this spell, and if it wanted to find completion, it had to leave him to his magic. It had to let him live.

It did not, however, have to leave _Crowley_ alive. Aziraphale felt its intention slither through him in the instant before it struck, and he reached out with his own magic to grab it, quick as grabbing a striking snake. This magic writhed in his grasp the way the spell had, but it was not bound to him by his casting of it, so when it lashed out around him he had no way to stop it. He could only watch as it slammed into Crowley full force, his own magic wrapped around it in futility.

Aziraphale had had cause to use swords several times in his life, to various effect, and so he recognized the sensation of striking one against another. The clash of magics reverberated back at him upon contact in much the same way, tingling over his senses in ways that did not correspond with any body part. The magic in him had come from the same place as Crowley’s, the same magic that bridged between them now like an arc of lightning from cloud to ground, but they were not the same. They had been separated, the way a cup of water separates from a river, and the magic between them sought to pour them out again.

Crowley struggled against it just as hard as Aziraphale, resisting the magic’s will to subsume them. Aziraphale pulled from his end and Crowley pulled from the other end and the magic pulled in the middle, bringing them together. Bracing himself for the impact of Crowley’s magic against his own, he closed his eyes and let it wash into and over him rather than fight. Crowley’s essence poured into him, into the magic that had pooled within him. The magic which had sloughed over Crowley to turn him into something he’d never been, to bind his life’s energy, coated Aziraphale’s magic like a thick pour of oil.

Aziraphale had a choice, then, and he made it the way he had made most of the decisions in his life lately: without thinking. Rather than try to keep separate from Crowley, he leaned into the melding of their two powers and allowed Crowley in completely. Mixed himself up and laid himself bare, until there was no one and the other. Only them, together.

In that moment, the magic turned away from them, the same way it had first turned away from Aziraphale alone, as though their melding had turned Crowley into the caster too. Around them the bookshelves had begun to wilt and the floor had turned to a wavering shimmer and the hole in the wall was pulsing. The magic that had been stored in the manor continued to leach into the spell and the glow from the ring had begun to spider-web inward like cracked glass until it met the tear. The scarred lip of the previous opening began to break down, an ancient thing crumbling to dust before their eyes, and when the last piece of it had dissolved, the opening slammed outward until it hit the solid, glowing barrier.

The door had opened.

“Close it!” Crowley shouted.

Aziraphale stood tall, neck stretching and wings raising as he touched the spell again. This time, across their newly-forged bond, Crowley was able to reach with him, and together they gave the final command.

 _Close_.

The doorway tremored minutely, and then winked out of sight entirely.

Without the connection to an endless well of magic to sustain them, both Aziraphale and Crowley collapsed to the ruined floor, unmoving.

* * *

Aziraphale came to his senses in pieces. The ache in his bones came first, chased like a fox by the hounding pain of pulled muscles. Light spiked at his head and he closed his eyes tighter in a vain attempt to stop it. Sound filtered in, muffled by the ringing in his ears. Crowley had warned him it would feel like this, after casting such a huge spell, but he hadn’t understood just how dead he would feel without actually _being_ dead.

“Crowley?” he asked, but it sounded weird aloud. He tried to work his jaw to clear the muffle, but nothing happened. He still felt like he was listening underwater.

“Aziraphale?” Anathema’s voice, high and clear and worried. “Oh, you- hey, hey, no, stay down.”

He felt her hands upon him, but the sensation was as muffled as his hearing. There was a blanket over him, perhaps. A thick, warm one. Her hands were gentle, stroking over his long neck and down over his back. It felt nice, a counterpoint to the soreness in the rest of his body, and he relaxed into it.

“You’ve been out two days,” she continued, soothingly. “Newt and I came back in the morning, and found you and Crowley in the library. He’s right here, but he’s still asleep. Or… well, not awake. We weren’t sure you _would_ wake up.”

“Did it work?” he tried to ask, but it only came out garbled.

He stilled, eyes opening.

He’d opened wings. He’d heard Crowley’s voice saying _words_.

Long neck. Weird sounds.

He let out a breath, bracing himself, and lifted his head from the bed. It lifted and lifted and lifted, his neck almost automatically arching into a graceful curve as he swiveled his head to look down his orange bill at Anathema’s hand upon his white, feathery back.

He was a swan.

“Oh dear,” he said, only it sounded an awful lot like a very sad _waugh_.

“Yeah,” Anathema agreed, even though he was sure she didn’t understand him. “Seems like opening the door didn’t consume Crowley’s spell… it shared it with you.”

Aziraphale stared at her, mind racing in place. He was a swan. He had reached out to save Crowley, made the spell think that they were the same so that it would pass him over instead of consume his life. The magic must have warped the transmogrification spell the same way it had warped the bookshelves and the floor and-

And if it had warped one spell to spread it, he had no doubt it had warped the other. Cold fear settled in the pit of his belly to think that he would be doomed to the same life-stealing curse as Crowley. He could hardly bear the thought that his life might be forever sustained by the lives of others. He closed his eyes, just breathing, and reached out to touch the spell upon him, the one still threaded between him and the prone, black swan beside him.

What he found was not at all what he expected. Crowley’s spell led to him. He had felt it once before, after Crowley had explained spell mapping to him properly, and while it had touched him then, it had only been connected in theory. It only dug in claws when the moment was right.

There were no claws here, just a thin string of magic between them that did not come from either of them but belonged to them both.

Part if it, he found as he followed the spell along its course, had wrapped loosely around the amulet still around his neck. The amulet had held a spell as well, and just as surely it had warped. Aziraphale could feel the well of magic within it, still nearly full to the brim from uncapping the tear, and he realized with a bit of relief that while the spell-warping had caused one problem by turning him into a swan, it had partially solved Crowley’s other curse.

Beside him, Crowley shifted and blinked a few times before looking up at Aziraphale. He froze. “Oh, _fuck_. You’re a swan.”

Aziraphale snorted at the obvious declaration. “It would seem that my attempt to stop the spell from killing you caused your curse to spread to me. Well. Both of them.”

Crowley’s head dipped and Aziraphale felt an instinctual urge to bow in response. “I am so sorry, Aziraphale. I wouldn’t wish such damnation on anyone else.”

“I’d hardly call this _damned_ , Crowley,” Aziraphale said with a sniff. “I’m still alive, and so are you. A little differently shaped, perhaps, but we’re here. Together. Even the life stealing seems to have warped into something tolerable.”

“Tolerable?” Crowley echoed.

Aziraphale dipped his head and felt a wash of delight when Crowley bowed automatically, despite that Aziraphale’s instinct told him to bow back again. He was not about to start an endless loop. “It appears to be taking a small, continuous drain from the amulet, now. I don’t think anyone else will be in danger. Although… I suppose we ought to have Anathema bring us something to check. How do you feel about chicken for dinner?”

“I think you’re a bird now,” Crowley said.

“Right,” Aziraphale said, his words catching up to him. This was going to take some getting used to. “And she can’t understand us anyway, can she.”

They both turned to look at her, and she took her hands off Aziraphale’s back to hold them up in surrender. “Sorry, sorry,” she told them, scooting off the edge of the bed to stand. “I’ll go. I didn’t want to interrupt whatever _this_ was. Newt was going to bring lunch up, but since you’re both awake, you can just come down when you’re ready.”

She hesitated partway to the door, and turned back to look at them. “It… it _worked_ , right?” she asked. “I couldn’t feel anything in the library anymore, but you… look like that. So. Did it _work?”_

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who gave a single, clear honk for Anathema. She hissed a quiet, celebratory _yessss_ , her hands clapping just once. Aziraphale wished he could smile, but since a bill made that impossible, he hooted and lifted his wings with her. They had succeeded. They were safe, if not quite in the condition they had expected. It was worth a celebration.

“We’re going to have to find a way to tell her about the amulet so she can stay if she wants,” Aziraphale said after she had gone. He turned back to Crowley, who was just staring at him in what could only be fondness. “And at some point the power stored in it it will run out. We’ll have to find a way to charge it. Maybe we can use it to put a lock on the door. Maybe-”

“That’s a long way off,” Crowley interrupted gently. “You were here for months without the amulet running out. So, let’s just go get something to eat, and we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Crowley struggled up to his feet on the soft bed, obviously aching just as much as Aziraphale was.

“Well, if you insist,” Aziraphale said, watching Crowley jump heavily down to the floor before following suit. He _was_ quite hungry. “You know, I’ve had quite a lot of luck crossing bridges lately. The last one brought me right to you.”

At that, Crowley hissed, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but think it sounded like laughter. It sounded like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little epilogue after this, which I will be posting in a moment!


	15. Epilogue

Beyond the bounds of civilization, along a newly tended road leading away from the last dusty town, lies a manor often frequented. The scorch marks surrounding the windows of the eastern wing are hidden in the rich, green ivy that covers the entire building, all the way to the slate roof. Spread around its base sits a lake, black as midnight and disturbed on occasion by the jumping of a fish. The water cradles the bridge that leads to the manor, and the solid dock along the bank, and welcomes those who would cool their feet on a hot summer day.

A family inhabits the manor, and has done so for generations now; anelderly witch and her husband, and their children, and their children’s children. The youngest roam the halls and fish from the lake and feed the birds that nest in the eaves and fill the air with song. The others tend to the ever-green orchard, kept warm and bountiful even in the winter by the magic the witch has cast upon it, or care for the gardens or read in the library. The townsfolk come to help, and they bring their children to play, and delight echoes through the once-empty manor.

Outside, a pair of beautiful swans decorate the surface of the lake, one black and one white. They are too big to be natural beasts, and too long lived, and too strangely mannered. Unbothered by the season, they glide in tandem around the manor like strolling lovers, graceful and silent, and for so long now that their arrival has nearly passed from living memory.

For now, there are still some who do remember when there was only one swan, and the grave sense of disquiet and mourning that surrounded the manor, and the death that stalked its grounds. There are those that remember the tales of a sorcerer who lived within these walls, and protected them from an enchantress that would have destroyed their town. There are those that remember what came after; the stories the witch told of a portal, and a curse, and the sacrifice which continues even now, to keep the portal closed.

As all things do, the past passes on, moving closer to legend with every new day. Now, there is fortune here; a bounty for all those who respect the manor and its denizens. Now, they know that the manor is not haunted by ghosts or monsters, but by the echo of love the pair of swans had for the village and its people and indeed the world.

No one questions bringing gifts when they visit. For the swans, they chop fresh fruits and vegetables, and bring fresh grains and greens, and offer portions of their catches from the lake. The children often carry new books with them, meant for the library. Before that, while their parents help tend the garden or the orchard or the manor, the children sit upon the dock, and read to the peaceful birds, who listen raptly to every word.

Though no one speaks of it directly anymore, the people of the area know under whose wings they have found safety and peace. They know what they owe to the guardian swans upon the black-mirror lake.

Magic has a price, they teach their children.

Magic _always_ has a price.

And this time, it is gladly paid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at last! I don't know what to say except that I hope you enjoyed the ride and the uh... unconventional ending ^_^; Thank you for reading this far and if you are so inclined, I would love to hear from you!


End file.
